Viking Ship Museum (Vikingskiphuset), Oslo

The Viking Museum

After getting off our Mini-Cruise, and a little bit of a walk up and around a small residential town area, we came upon the Viking museum and decided to start our museum-tour here...mainly because there was not an awful lot of people going into it at this stage whereas elsewhere looked really busy, we thought it might be quieter. It is not a huge place, but it is worth a look, and the beauty of it is that it suits just a short stay or a longer depending on your interests. Again we entered on our Oslo Pass but adult entry is NOK 50.

You enter a beautiful building with huge high ceilings- it was purpose-built to house the huge Vikingships by a well-known Norwegian architect Arnstein Arneberg in 1927. To the left you have a little gift shop with all manner of Viking-related literature, postcards, information and memorabilia as well as gifts. Straight ahead of you is a huge recovered Viking ship from the Royal burial grounds of the Oslo Fjord which has been renovated and maintained for the purpose of the museum-you can go up onto a little balcony area to see into and over the ships shell. There are 2 further ships-I couldn’t remember their names so I looked them up again-they are Oseberg, Gokstad and Tune!

There are also finds from a mass grave exhibited including jewellery, weapons and vehicle tools, and also other tools and household goods. When we were in there there were some actors dressed up in Viking garb which was good for the kids and they were getting them to dress up too and pose as Vikings, there was also other little activities, a trail and some archaeological style activities for the families visiting which I thought was really good to get them engaged with the history so pertinent to their culture. Our experience was valuable but short at this museum which suited me as we moved onto another!

What I can say is this museum, along with the others around Bygdøy are very accessible, if not by the mini-cruise boat you can also get on a local town bus NUMBER 30 to Bygdøy, and it is not too far out of the city-about 10mins. After our trip to the museums we jumped back on the bus to head back into the city. I recommend popping by when you are in Oslo for sure if you're interested in a little Viking history!