On to Oslo

We arrived fresh and ready to hit Oslo after a night on the Ferry... amazingly smooth journey. We packed up our little cabin, and headed down to the car deck. Once our GPS booted up and realised it had moved to a different country we headed to meet the next key giver of the new AirBNB apartment - a lovely little space, I'm very taken with Scandanavian interiors!!

Then once we had unloaded the car, we set off in the car - due to the short stay, we have not mastered the public transport system, and instead just visited three museums, all of which we drove to. The first was the Munch Museet. They were having an exhibition of Munch and Van Gogh, cohosted by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. It was a terrific exhibition, and showed the parallels between the two artists, who came into painting around the same time, and had similar influences, however interestingly never met! I was fascinated because there were so many paintings by Van Gogh that I had never seen before, this one particularly grabbed me... Two figures in the undergrowth.

The Munch Museet gave the kids a treasure hunt activity to do, where they had a map of the museum, and stickers with parts of the paintings. They had to match the stickers to the rooms, and (optionally) write the name of the painting and the year it was done. It was a terrific activity and really got the kids engaged with the artworks. Then they got this pack at the end as a reward for getting it all right!

After the Munch Museet, we headed to the Vikingskipshuset - a fascinating look at 3 Viking Ships which had been used around 900AD as burial tombs for 'important' people. The deceased were interred in a burial chamber on the boat, and surrounded with useful goods which would be beneficial in the afterlife. These ships are the best preserved because they have been buried, however when they were discovered they were treated with a preservative, which stopped the outside of the wood from deteriorating, but sadly are now decomposing from inside, and the museum experts are not sure how best to prevent it continuing.

Interesting fact for the day... Vikings did not wear helmets with horns!

A bonus from our ticket to the Vikingskipshuset, was it also gave us entry into the Historical Museum within 48 hours! So on the morning we were leaving Oslo, we had a quick visit to the Historical Museum to get another quick look at Norwegian Viking History and Life in the Arctic Circle!

We saw a model of a Stave Church in the Historical Museum, and then realised that it was en route to our next stop - Bergen!