2003 Scandanavian Circle - Oslo, Not In A Day

Hello everyone, it's great to have my computer back, devirused and upgraded. It was being set up by my friend Roy as Ian and myself returned home from the Squires Rally in Scotland. It was great to catch up with our friends in the north and wonderful to go up to Scotland for the first time in several years. I will endeavour to do a post on the rally in the near future, but for now I shall complete the Scandinavian Circle adventure.

We have a full itinerary for today and catch the bus into Oslo from the campsite with our first stop being at the Stena ticket office, which was closed! There is a ferry service that takes people across the bay and we caught this to go and do some sightseeing at three of the museums. Our first museum was the Kon-Tiki Museum that houses both the Kon-Tiki and Ra II. The Kon-Tiki balsa raft crossed 5,000 miles of the Pacific Ocean in 1947, taking 101 days for the achievement. A documentary film was produced of the adventure, winning Thor Heyerdhal an Oscar, which is on display in the museum. In May 1970, Ra II sailed from Morocco to Barbados in 57 days, manned by a crew of eight men from eight nations. Also in the museum is a video presentation and information about the restoration of the Easter Island Stones. For the Viking Ship Museum it is a good idea to look in the car park to see how many coaches are there before entering as coaches + people = very litte looking space. We therefore decided to have a look in the Folkemuseum, which is similat to the Weald and Downland Museum back home.
Within the grounds of the museum there are rescued buildings from across Norway, including a Stave Church from 1200AD,

various town buildings and shops, selling a small selection of wares, woodland areas and exhibition halls thatconcentrate on Norwegian immigrants.

While we were there the exhibition was about the Pakistani people that had made the journey across land with one of their colourful vehicles on display.

Looking on the museum's website there is a mention of cricket, one of Ian's favourite sports. It appears that cricket has been brought to Norway with the immigrants. One day there may be an international match between England and Norway in this wonderful sport! We spent about three hours looking around the folkemuseum before heading back to the Viking Ship Museum. There was now only one coach in the car park, so in we went. The museum itself is quite small but inside there are two well preserved long ships, the Oseberg and the Gokstad, along with a textile gallery that kept Guzzisue quiet for some time.
The Oseberg was found in a large burial mound in Veatfold and excavated in 1904. It was built between 815-820 AD and is 22 meters long. It was used as a grave ship for a high ranking woman.
Likewise the Gokstad was also found in a burial mound in Vestfold and excavated in 1880 and was built around 890 AD. Again it was used as a grave ship, this time for a Viking Chieftain and is slightly longer at 24 meters.
As the next coach parties arrived we departed and caught the water ferry back and tried the Stena ticket office again. This time it was open but we cannot buy a ticket as they only sell them in the early afternoon and not when the ferry is in port, so we will try again tomorrow and also have a little think about any alternatives incase we cannot get on board.
Back at the campsite we pick up a large pizza and sit down for some serious tv watching, that is until the cable network went down.