Musée des navires vikings (Oslo) (4874556533)

The Viking Ship Museum ( no, Vikingskipshuset på Bygdøy) is located on the

Bygdøy Bygdøy or Bygdø is a peninsula situated on the western side of Oslo, Norway. Administratively, Bygdøy belongs to the borough of Frogner; historically Bygdøy was part of Aker Municipality and became part of Oslo in 1948. Bygdøy is a popul ...

peninsula in

Oslo Oslo ( , , or ; sma, Oslove) is the capital and most populous city of Norway. It constitutes both a county and a municipality. The municipality of Oslo had a population of in 2022, while the city's greater urban area had a population of ...

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of ...

. It will be temporarily closed from September 2021 until 2025/2026. It is part of the Museum of Cultural History of the

University of Oslo The University of Oslo ( no, Universitetet i Oslo; la, Universitas Osloensis) is a public research university located in Oslo, Norway. It is the highest ranked and oldest university in Norway. It is consistently ranked among the top universit ...

, and houses three

Viking Vikings ; non, víkingr is the modern name given to seafaring people originally from Scandinavia (present-day Denmark, Norway and Sweden), who from the late 8th to the late 11th centuries raided, pirated, traded and se ...

era burial ships that were found as part of

archaeological Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscap ...

finds from Tune, Gokstad (

Sandefjord Sandefjord () is a city and the most populous municipality in Vestfold og Telemark county, Norway. The municipality of Sandefjord was established on 1 January 1838. The municipality of Sandar was merged into Sandefjord on 1 January 1969. On 1 ...

), Oseberg (

Tønsberg Tønsberg , historically Tunsberg, is a city and municipality in Vestfold og Telemark county, eastern Norway, located around south-southwest of Oslo on the western coast of the Oslofjord near its mouth onto the Skagerrak. The administrative c ...

) and the

Borre mound cemetery Borre mound cemetery (Norwegian: ''Borrehaugene'' from the ''Old Norse'' words ''borró'' and ''haugr'' meaning mound) forms part of the Borre National Park at Horten in Vestfold og Telemark, Norway. It is home to seven large and 21 smaller b ...

Attractions

The museum is most famous for the completely whole Oseberg ship, excavated from the largest known

ship burial A ship burial or boat grave is a burial in which a ship or boat is used either as the tomb for the dead and the grave goods, or as a part of the grave goods itself. If the ship is very small, it is called a boat grave. This style of burial was ...

in the world. Other main attractions at the Viking Ship Museum are the Gokstad ship and Tune ship. Additionally, the

Viking Age The Viking Age () was the period during the Middle Ages when Norsemen known as Vikings undertook large-scale raiding, colonizing, conquest, and trading throughout Europe and reached North America. It followed the Migration Period and the Germ ...

display includes sledges, beds, a horse cart, wood carving, tent components, buckets and other

grave goods Grave goods, in archaeology and anthropology, are the items buried along with the body. They are usually personal possessions, supplies to smooth the deceased's journey into the afterlife or offerings to the gods. Grave goods may be classed as a ...

History

In 1913, Swedish professor

Gabriel Gustafson Gabriel Adolf Gustafson (8August 185316April 1915) was a Swedish-Norwegian archaeologist. He was responsible for the excavation and conservation of the Oseberg Ship (''Osebergfunnet'') . Biography Gabriel Gustafson was born in Visby, in Got ...

proposed a specific building to house

finds that were discovered at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. The Gokstad and Oseberg ships had been stored in temporary shelters at the University of Oslo. An architectural contest was held, and

Arnstein Arneberg Arnstein Rynning Arneberg (6 July 1882 – 9 June 1961) was a Norwegian architect. He was active professionally for 50 years and is often considered the leading architect in Norway of his time. Personal life Arnstein Rynning Arneberg was ...

won. The hall for the Oseberg ship was built with funding from the

Parliament of Norway The Storting ( no, Stortinget ) (lit. the Great Thing) is the supreme legislature of Norway, established in 1814 by the Constitution of Norway. It is located in Oslo. The unicameral parliament has 169 members and is elected every four years bas ...

, and the ship was moved from the University shelters in 1926. The halls for the ships from Gokstad and Tune were completed in 1932. Building of the last hall was delayed, partly due to the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...

, and this hall was completed in 1957. It houses most of the other finds, mostly from Oseberg.

Museum extension

On 20 December 2000 the University of Oslo had supported a proposal by the Historical Museum to move the ships and all the

to a proposed new museum in

Bjørvika Bjørvika is a neighborhood in the Sentrum borough of Oslo, Norway. The area is an inlet in the inner Oslofjord, situated between Gamlebyen and Akershus Fortress. It serves as an outlet for the river Akerselva. Since the 2000s, it has been unde ...

, Oslo. There has been much debate about this suggestion, both in the museum and archaeological community as well as in the media. Opponents to the move have raised concerns that the ships are too fragile and that they will not survive the move undamaged, while proponents claim otherwise, suggesting a move could go ahead without inflicting serious damage to the finds. In 2015 the Ministry let Statsbygg announce a competition for the expansion of existing facilities at Bygdøy. The winner of the architectural competition was released the 12 April 2016, and it was the Danish firm

AART architects AART architects is an architectural firm based in Aarhus, Denmark. The firm has been awarded for its work. Selected projects Completed * Bikuben Kollegium, Copenhagen, Denmark * Kulturværftet, Helsingør, Denmark (2011) * Inspiria Science C ...

with their proposal titled "NAUST".

Gallery

File:Inside Viking Ship Museum, Oslo 01.jpg File:Exhibition in Viking Ship Museum, Oslo 03.jpg File:Tools in Viking Ship Museum, Oslo.jpg File:Oseberg ship - IMG 9186.jpg File:Gokstad Ship June 2012.jpg

References

Other sources

*Brøgger, A. W. and Schetelig, H. ''Osebergfundet'' (Oslo. 1917) *Brøgger A.W. and Shetelig, H. ''Vikingskipene deres forgjenger og etterfølgere'' (Oslo. 1950) *Christensen, Arne Emil ''Kongsgårdens håndtverkere, Osebergdronningens grav, vår arkeologiske nasjonalskatt i nytt lys'' (Oslo. 1992) *Ingstad, Anne Stine ''Hva har tekstilene vært brukt til? Osebergdronningens grav'' (Oslo. 1992)

External links

Viking Ship Museum website
{{Authority control Bygdøy Maritime museums in Norway Museums in Oslo Viking Age museums University museums in Norway University of Oslo