This past week, I took another quickie trip, this time to Oslo, Norway. The choice of destination may sound a little odd to some people, so let me briefly explain. I have been doing genealogical research this summer since I have been, for a long time, interested in my ancestral roots. I find it interesting to think of how our ancestry influences the people we are and what those roots can tell us.
My father was adopted, so we know virtually nothing about his (biological) side of the family. I think this may have influenced my quest for identity more than any other factor. On my mother’s side, I have been able to trace the the family back several generations, and it appears that my great-grandmother (along with her parents and a passel of siblings) immigrated from Norway to the United States in the late nineteenth century. I have yet to trace them into Norway itself, but still hope to do so.
I am considering working some of this heritage into my art, possibly through folk tales or mythic imagery, so I decided it would be a good opportunity to do a little hands on research. I arrived in Norway at the Torp-Sandefjord Airport, south of Oslo, on Wednesday evening. My plane was late and it was dark out, so I was unable to much of the landscape. I boarded the shuttle to the train and took the train to Oslo. It was a short walk from the train station to my hotel.
On Thursday morning, I rose early and had breakfast in the hotel. They had a buffet which was geared to a more continental palette, reminding me of what was considered breakfast when I stayed in Germany many years ago. The hotel had made some concessions to their US and UK visitors by providing scrambled eggs, baked beans and cereal. The rest of the buffet consisted of breads, runny yogurt, processed meat, fresh veggies, cheese, tomato and onion salad and other items I was unable to identify. It was interesting and fun to have such diverse options.
My first stop was the Viking Ship Museum which is located with a cluster of other cultural museums on a small spurt of land called Bygdøy. Bygdøy juts out into Oslo Fjord and is bit west of downtown Oslo. The bus took me right to the doorstep of the museum and in I walked. It was amazing to see the ships here in their various states of reconstruction.There are three ships here, perhaps the most famous of which is the Osberg ship, discovered in 1903 by a farmer on Lille Oseberg farm in Slagen in Vestfold.
In the year 834, two prosperous women died. The Oseberg ship was pulled ashore and used as a burial ship for the two ladies. A burial chamber was dug right behind the ship’s mast. Inside, the walls were decorated with fantastic woven tapestries and the dead women lay on a raised bed. The women had a number of burial gifts with them. There were personal items such as clothes, shoes and combs, ship’s equipment, kitchen equipment, farm equipment, three ornate sledges and a working sledge, a wagon, five carved animal heads, five beds and two tents. There were fifteen horses, six dogs and two small cows.
The Gokstad ship was uncovered in 1879.
The Gokstad ship was built in about 850, at the height of the Viking period. There was a need for ships that could serve many purposes and the Gokstad ship could have been used for voyages of exploration, trade and Viking raids. The ship could be both sailed and rowed. There are 16 oar holes on each side of the ship. With oarsmen, steersman and lookout, that would have meant a crew of 34. There is no sign of thwarts. The oarsmen probably sat on chests, which could also have held personal equipment.
The ship is made of oak and is clinker-built, with 16 rows of strakes. The nine strakes below the waterline are only two to three centimetres thick, making the sides both light and flexible. The keel is made of one straight piece of oak. The deck consists of pine planks that can be easily lifted, so that the crew could easily bale out water if needed. This also gave storage space for a little cargo.
White woollen cloth with red cloth strips sewn on was found in the forepart of the ship. This may have been the remains of the sail. At the time of burial, 32 shields were fixed to each side of the ship. They were painted yellow and black, alternately. The ends of the bow and stern posts had rotted away, so it is unclear how they were finished. There is nothing to indicate that dragon heads were fixed to them. But even without dragon heads, the Gokstad ship must have been an impressive sight when it came over the horizon in full sail.
The third ship is from Tune, excavated in 1867 on Nedre Haugen farm at Rolvsøy, near Fredrikstad. Since this was an early excavation, standard archeological practices were not yet in place and the find was not removed or preserved with the care that the others received. Not only are there spade marks on parts of the ship from the careless way that it was uncovered, but many of the items of the find itself went missing and never made it back to Oslo.
Not only are the ships fascinating, but the artefacts recovered are remarkable as well. I was immensely impressed with the intricate and complex carvings on both the ships and on the other artefacts from the sites. The cart, sleighs, post heads and tent posts are all carved with these distinctive designs. Many are decorated with silver or bronze tack heads which set off and accent the designs. According to the archeologist’s notes, when these artefacts were uncovered the designs were painted with bright colours. “To conserve the fragile wood, many of the objects were immersed in a solution of hot alum salts. Afterwards the pieces were glued and screwed together, and then varnished for display.” Unfortunately, the alum salts removed any surface paint and sometimes caused fine details to disappear.
Just down the road from the Ship Museum is the Norwegian Folk Museum, “Norway’s largest museum of cultural history featuring the world’s oldest open air museum and large indoor collections.” This is similar in some ways to the Alaska Native Heritage Center, where there are houses of the various Alaskan Native peoples and traditionally dressed attendants who answer questions and provide information.
In this case, the houses and outbuildings are from various parts of Norway from around 1500 to the present. They have rebuilt complete farms, logging sites, an apartment building and numerous other dwellings. There are over 150 buildings from rural and urban Norway, including the collection of King Oscar II (yes, he collected buildings). The buildings are decorated appropriately for their status and eras; some quite ornately while others are very simple with perhaps some carved areas on the wooden walls or doors. In addition to classic log structures and traditional looking farmhouses, there is a magnificent Stave Church from Gol. In 1880 it was to be replaced with a more modern building, so it was presented to King Oscar who had it transported and rebuilt on Bygdøy.
There is also an “Old Town” section which is comprised of buildings from Oslo and its suburbs.
Christiania (Oslo)
In 1624 the town of Oslo was completely destroyed by fire. King Christian IV decreed that the town should be moved west, closer to the protection of Akershus Fortress. This new town was called Christiania and was laid out with wide streets which met at right angles, designed to hinder the spread of fire. Buildings in the new town were to be made of stone or brick, and not of the traditional log construction. People who could not afford to build brick houses were allowed to build half-timbered structures, “in the Danish fashion.” Christiania became a little town typical of Northern Europe with 330 properties with buildings of brick, halftimbering and logs. Ramparts were built around the town for defense. These defined the town’s dimensions for many years to come. The wealthy lived around Bjørvika, the harbor area. The harbor was continually being filled in and new streets and houses built.
Many of these small, old-world buildings were replaced during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and some were acquired and rebuilt at the Folk Museum to form the Old Town. Like the other buildings in the Folk Museum, you can look inside many of these and see furnishings and decorations from their appropriate eras.
After wandering around the nearly 35 square acre site for a few hours, I was ready for some time indoors, so I hopped the bus back to Oslo proper and headed to the Museum of Cultural History. Here, the more fragile bits of the ship burials residing at the Viking Ship Museum are displayed, in addition other artefacts from the Stone, Bronze, Iron and Viking Ages in Norway, a Mediaeval Gallery and Ethnographic and Egyptian exhibitions.
It was getting to be late in the day and I had only an hour or so before the museum closed, so I concentrated on the Viking Age and Museum galleries. The Viking Age collection contains jewellery, weapons, tools, and such, all uniquely decorated and carved. It was amazing to see these items in person, having so often seen them before in books and drawings. Brooches and pins were all intricately decorated with carvings that baffle the eye. The simplicity of the forms combines with the complex knotwork patterns to form a maze that one can get lost in.
In the Mediaeval Gallery, they had collected some fine examples of the carved entryways to Stave Churches. Stave Churches are of wooden, post and lintel construction; the load-bearing posts are called stav in Norwegian. The portals were often decorated with traditional knotwork designs incorporating animals, birds and people into the intricate patterns.
As I exited the Mediaeval Gallery, I realised that they the museum was closing and it was time to go.
