A cultural day in Oslo

Day two in Oslo and I was ready for more exploring! My friend had recommended me to visit Norsk Folkemuseum, to learn about the cultural history of Norway. So of course I had to go there. Spoiler: I loved it! The weather wasn’t as hot as the day before and it even rained a little. Perfect for a day outside in an open air museum, without melting or washing away. The archaeologist in me was obviously excited to roam the premises and the museum surely did not disappoint! Every hour there was also a performance of folk dance and music, which was quite nice! I definitely recommend going here when you visit Oslo.

After having spent hours in the folk museum, I headed to the Vikingskiphuset, only a short walk away from it. In this museum you can see three Viking ships: Oseberg, Gokstad and Tune. For some reason I’ve always been fascinated by Vikings and excitedly took a course in maritime archaeology at uni (while being hugely disappointed we didn’t learn more about the Vikings!), so visiting this museum was a total no-brainer. Seeing those big ships and the movie they played multiple times an hour, was simply really cool!

Upside to those long summer days in Scandinavia is that I felt it was worth ‘squeezing in’ a visit to Vigelandsparken, although I initially planned on going the next day. The park is the world’s largest sculpture park made by a single artist (Gustav Vigeland). The park has over 200 statues, and was mainly completed between 1939 and 1949. The park is one of the most popular sights in Norway and therefore frequently visited, so I estimated my chances of being caught in a hoard of people to be lower early in the evening than in the middle of a day. It was overcast when I went, but by no means cold. Actually quite nice to roam about and take heaps of pictures.

I’m always surprised at how much you can do in a day. Back home, the days seem to fly by so fast, but that’s obviously due to working full time and being knackered once getting home. And with my introduction to Norway being an awesome one, I knew this vacation was going to be a winner!