At the Viking Ship museum, we saw three beautifully preserved thousand year old ships: the Oseberg, Gokstad, and Tune ships. Each of these initially served as Viking warships but eventually were retired and placed into burial mounds for royalty. The Oseberg and Gokstad ships are almost completely intact.
Also displayed at the museum are treasures found aboard the ships that were buried with the people, such as sleighs, various wooden chests, and beautifully carved wooden carts.
It was fascinating to explore these artifacts and to learn more about the Vikings.
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At a nearby FRAM museum, we found a more modern ship, the FRAM. It is the only ship that sailed on expeditions to both the North and South poles, headed by the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen.
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We spent most of the day at the Norwegian Folk Museum, a huge open-air museum featuring Norway's cultural history. It consists of more than 150 historical buildings that have been relocated here from different parts of Norway, dating anywhere from 14th to 18th century. A gorgeous wooden Stave Church is actually from the 13th century.
Other buildings include traditional village houses, stores, town houses, manors, barns, and storage houses.
Re-enactors dressed in traditional folk clothes welcome visitors in every part of the museum, engaging in a variety of activities throughout the day such as playing old-fashioned musical instruments and folk dancing.
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I really enjoyed observing the process of making lefse, a Norwegian potato flat bread. We did get to taste lefse, still hot, sweet and delicious with a little bit of butter.
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These museums were an excellent hands-on way to learn about Norway.
