The best museums Norway

The museum opened in 1991, on the edge of an area excavated for rock engravings discovered in 1973. This is the largest area of its kind in Northern Europe, and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It was quickly voted best European museum in 1993, with 3,000 open-air engravings dating from 2,500 to 7,000 years ago. Inside the building, the museum features exhibitions on Finnmark's prehistory, Saami culture and the mysterious Komsa culture, named after the nearby mountain (viewpoint of the midnight sun). Superb.

There are only 3 boats in this very sober museum, but what wonders! They were found in Tune, Gokstad and Oseberg in the excavations of Tune, Gokstad and Oseberg. They transported Vikings banned in Iceland and Greenland, crossed the North Sea to America for a failed settlement attempt, entering the Mediterranean to Istanbul to trade or to carry out bloody raids. The Bateau boat, the largest and best preserved, was the tomb of a Viking queen. The objects exhumed are entirely unique, such as these terrifying heads of stylised dragon dragon, this astonishing seal adorned by a Buddha attesting to trade with Asian peoples and this richly carved trolley with a Gunnar representation in the snake pit, which is no other than Wagner's «Günther du Ring» (inspired by ancient Nordic legends).

Gustav Vigeland (1869-1943) was a Norwegian sculptor known for his immense contribution to Oslo's artistic life. He was the creator of Frogner Park, or Parc Vigeland, where many of his sculptures are displayed. He remains a unique sculptor, and an eminent symbol of Norwegian art on the international scene. Vigeland Park is one of the country's most visited attractions, welcoming almost a million visitors a year. In summer, it's not uncommon to see city dwellers sunbathing in their bathing suits on one of the many lawns, wireless headphones in their ears. Since 1924, Vigeland Park has been collecting and exhibiting the granite and wrought-iron works of the Norwegian artist whose name it bears. 214 of the 650 statues and drawings the artist created for the park are on display today, and they are among Oslo's strongest symbols. It is the world's largest sculpture park dedicated to a single artist. The park is considered Vigeland's life's work: in fact, he devoted almost 20 years of his life to its creation! It's a must-see place that reflects the Norwegian philosophy of giving nature pride of place. The park is the result of a dispute between Vigeland and the city of Oslo: Vigeland was evicted from his home in 1921, but relocated by the city to the building that is now the Vigeland Museum. In exchange for his new premises, home and studio, he promised to donate all his works to the City of Oslo. These massive sculptures come in all sizes, according to several main themes: death, daily life, men and women, children. It's also a very pleasant, clean place to stroll, whatever the season. Local residents go jogging here. Among the most famous statues are the Angry Boy(Sinnataggen) and the Monolith(Monolitten), which dominates the park at a height of 17 metres, and the imposing bronze fountain which, with its 20 statues, represents the circle of life, the Wheel of Life(Livshjulet). The first section to be opened to the public, in 1940, was the famous bridge: 100 metres long and 15 metres wide, with almost 60 statues on display. A fun walk for the whole family, to feel a little at home in the middle of the city! All year round.

The Fram is the polar ship built in 1892 and which continues the main part of the museum. It's the strongest ship in the world, and the one that has gone the furthest north and the furthest south! It was used on the three great polar expeditions of Fridtjof Nansen in 1893-1896, Otto Sverdrup in 1898-1902 and Roald Amundsen in 1910-1912. The ship is surrounded by a number of exhibits on polar history, revealing a fascinating part of the country's history.

In this open-air museum, one of the largest in Europe, you will find information on all aspects of Norwegian and Saami folklore. We discover their very colorful costumes, their language, which is not at all related to Norwegian but to Finnish, and their shamanic sorcerers who remind us of the Amerindians. In the vast park, 140 old houses originating from different regions of Norway and rebuilt here. A museum to discover absolutely.

With a total surface area of 54,600^m2, the new national gallery will, from June 2022, house around 5,000 works, from classical paintings to modern art, architecture to contemporary art, design and objects from Antiquity to the present day. The^2nd floor is devoted to the visual arts from the ^15th century to the present day. Temporary exhibitions in the Light Hall, a 2,400^m2 space that will host artists not already exhibited in the museum. In this hall, a 7 m-high ceiling is provided for special installations, and the outer walls are made of a marble panel between two glass panels to give a particular and lasting effect. The museum's exhibits include Gustav Vigeland's bas-relief Helvetet(Hell), which shows Rodin's influence, P.-N. Arbo's romantic-kitsch paintings Åsgårdsreien (The Knights of the Apocalypse), the Romantic period (1820-1870) with J.-C. Dahl's Stalheim Landscape , more beautiful than life itself. Dahl's larger-than-life Stalheim landscape, the accuracy of which you can verify by following the route from Bergen to Flåm. Portrait painter Adolphe Tidemand and landscape artist Hans Gude sometimes combined their talents to paint landscapes with figures. Curiously avant-garde for his time, Peder Balke's dark, sepia-toned northern seascapes narrowly missed out on a fresco commission at the Château de Versailles. Erik Werenskiold's Peasant Burial is painted in the realist tradition of the 1880s. The neo-romanticism of the 1890s in the astonishing Vinternatt i Rondane, Winter Night in Rondane, which took Harald Solberg some fifteen years to complete in these icy mountains. In an impressionist mood, Kitty Kielland's Sommernatt fra Jaeren, Summer Night at Jaeren, expresses the exceptional light of this part of the south coast. And above all, a room devoted to some twenty paintings by Edvard Munch, including The Scream, Madonna and The Sick Child.

Take your time to visit this superb new gigantic museum (architects Kleihues + Schuwerk), and return several times rather than saturate! Also outdoor restaurant, café, wifi, events and workshops for all ages. Magnificent views over Oslo from the terrace at the top of this museum. A winning bet for the city of Oslo, which now boasts the largest art museum in Scandinavia. It's also an opportunity to see works that have never been shown before, due to lack of space.

Oslo's Natural History Museum is the most comprehensive in the country. Animal, plant and mineral specimens have been studied here for over 200 years. The Zoogeographic Hall shows animals in their natural habitats around the world. The Norwegian Hall takes us from the oceans to the country's highest mountains. The Systematic Hall traces Norwegian vertebrates, and finally, the last hall hosts temporary exhibitions.

The Svalbard Museum is a museum of natural and cultural history. Of educational interest, its purpose is to present the Arctic, as well as to highlight its history, beauty and the environmental problems that it faces today. The museum therefore presents several themes, from the discovery of the territory to its mining, until the arrival of current tourism. In 2008, the Svalbard Museum received the prize of the Council of Europe Museum for the best European museum. You are strongly recommended!

The centre offers exhibitions on whales and reports on the research carried out by Norwegian scientists on these fascinating mammals. This is where you can book the 2-hour guided birdwatching tours to the Bird Rock in the Andenes Archipelago (season from¹ June to 20 August). A local fishing boat travels daily to this island where puffins, black-legged kittiwakes and many other seabirds can be seen!

The small, enchanted villa of the great Norwegian composer and pianist of classical music (Romantic period) is situated high up on a point of greenery overlooking Lake Nordås. Built in 1885 for Bergen-born Edvard Grieg, the house has been preserved in its original state since his death. This museum, which houses all Grieg's period furniture and personal objects, is a house that lives on thanks to the intimate concerts that are still held on the master's old piano. Grieg lived here for over twenty years at the end of his life. Today, there are concerts every day during the International Music Festival, as well as summer concerts on Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays. Tickets are on sale at the tourist office. The new, larger concert hall is fortunately hidden under the bridge just before the house. A little further down the road, Grieg's very basic little working hut is practically at the water's edge. His coat, hat and violin still hang on the wall. From the only window, you can see the lake through the branches of the large weeping birches. Another historic building nearby, the Fantoft Stavkirke, a wooden church dating back to 1150, sadly went up in smoke in June 1992, in the wave of arson and Satanism that swept the country. It has since been rebuilt to its original appearance.

In a listed customs house, there are exhibitions on hunting and scientific research in the polar regions, as well as photos of Amundsen's expeditions. In the summer many activities for children are organized. Go to their website to plan your visit and book places. Permanent exhibition on what Svalbard was like in the 17th and 18th centuries. The museum also organizes temporary exhibitions.

This open-air museum features 50 wooden houses from an old district of Bergen dating back to the ^17th century. In the old bakery, you can watch the making of Skillingsboller, Bergen's buns. There's also the old barber's shop, the photographer's, the tooth puller's... The rich bourgeois interior could have been the perfect setting for Ibsen's play Doll' s House. An attractive restaurant serves dishes that can be enjoyed on the terrace.

During the renovation of the city's iconic museum, the tour is in Schøtstuene and provides an opportunity to learn more about the wealthy Hanse traders who had a monopoly on trade in the north (dried cod, grain, salt). Bergen and Novogorod were among their most important trading posts. These great merchants lived separated from the rest of the population of Bergen in high houses lined up a few meters from the harbour. A nice visit.

The Kon-Tiki is the balsa raft used in 1947 by Thor Heyerdahl on one of his scientific expeditions to Easter Island in the Pacific. An expedition that made him famous the world over. The Ra II is also on display. This is a papyrus raft that enabled the explorer to cross the Atlantic from Morocco to Barbados in 1970. This small but interesting museum retraces the explorer's travels through photos, texts and films.

The stations of the 1994 Olympic Games have now been transformed into a large amusement park open all year round where you can discover the sensations usually reserved for competitors. The ski jump, the bobsleigh run, everything is open all year round and adapted to your wishes. Activities: toboggan, lift pass, helmet and goggles. It is also possible to sleep here, which is recommended to take advantage of the many activities offered!

KODE is the union of four art museums, all on the same campus, which present one of the best overviews of Nordic art in all of Scandinavia.

KODE 1 is the former Design Museum (located at Nordahl Bruns gate 9). The building houses the most important collection of Buddhist marble sculptures in Northern Europe. The permanent exhibition, "Man and Objects", tells the story of design and applied arts through 5 centuries.

KODE 2 hosts the annual temporary exhibitions, as well as the permanent collections of contemporary art.

KODE 3 houses the Rasmus Meyer collection, including several works by Edvard Munch, twenty large oil paintings, including Melancholy, Evening on Karl Johan, Jealousy and The Three Ages of Women, as well as works by the great Norwegian masters of the 18th and 19th centuries. The Romantic period is well represented by J.-C. Dahl with The Birch in the Storm and The Monastery of Lyse. We see Tidemand and Gude, the former with The Bad News and the latter with his High Mountain Landscape. Christian Krogh's stark realism shines through in The Struggle for Survival, while Kitty Kielland's magical light is captured in her Jaeren Landscape.

KODE 4 is devoted to 20th-century art, including Harald Solberg's numerous sketches of the Rondane Mountains. Also worth seeing are the Klee, Picasso, Miro, and the KunstLab, an art laboratory for children.

Where Tjuvholmen meets the fjord, you'll find one of Oslo's main attractions: the privately-owned Astrup Fearnley Museum, designed by the great architect Renzo Piano, creator of the Centre Georges Pompidou, the Parco della Musica and the New York Times building, among others. The Astrup Fearnley Museum of Contemporary Art is certainly in one of the most advantageous positions, planted at the end of the new Tjuvholmen district with a view over the fjord and the feeling of being on a boat. This is the new district built as an extension to Aker Brygge. And what a district it is! Sleek, classy and grandiose. Tjuvholmen is nicknamed the arts district. The architecture of the peninsula and the Astrup Fearnley Museum, inspired by its maritime surroundings and composed of three pavilions under a glass roof in the shape of a sail, evokes the city's capacity for constant innovation. Inside the museum, one of Northern Europe's most important collections of modern and contemporary art complements the National Gallery. Today, it includes works by major American talents, as well as those from Europe, Brazil, Japan, China and India, with big names such as Bacon, Koons, Hirst and Kiefer. Permanent exhibitions are complemented by temporary exhibitions, workshops and the Tjuvholmen sculpture park outside the museum. The Astrup Fearnley Museum celebrates its 30th anniversary in 2023.

New premises for the Munch Museum, now located in Bjørvika (near the Opera House) since October 2021.

A building much maligned for its architecture (not without reason... just look at the sad recycled aluminum sheet cladding), designed by Spanish architect Juan Herreros, the new Munch Museum has the advantage of being able to present, in addition to the works in the old museum, some lesser-known pieces, such as photographs and sculptures, as well as a film and monumental paintings(The Sun, The Searchers). For the record, they are so large that they had to be brought in through a special opening provided for the purpose during the construction work, which was subsequently closed again. The new museum is five times larger than the old one, and now houses over 26,000 works, including 18,000 prints by the Norwegian artist. An entire room features versions of the famous Scream, but the painting is housed in the Nasjonal Galleriet.

It should be remembered that the famous Scream, as well as La Madonna, disappeared in a surprising manner in August 2004 (a theft in broad daylight) and were found in "fairly good condition" two years later. Countless other equally powerful and impressive paintings make a visit to this museum an invaluable experience. Edvard Munch (1863-1944), one of the pioneers of Expressionism, was born in Løten, but the following year his family moved to Kristiania (Oslo). Four years later, his mother died of tuberculosis. At the age of 15, her favorite sister succumbed to the same disease, the scourge of the age. She is depicted in his painting The Sick Child. Munch worked extensively in Germany, exhibiting in Berlin, the birthplace of Expressionism. After a serious depression in Copenhagen in 1908, he returned to Norway. Among the paintings exhibited Dances on the Beach at Midnight, Kiss on the Hair of a Woman, Jealousy, The Lonely Ones, The Harpy, The Vampire, Melancholy, The Kiss of Death, Winter at Kragerø. In short, all Munch's anxieties in one museum.

Take your time, return several times and stop for lunch in the surrounding area. All the more reason not to spend 6 hours in a row: this visit is included in the Oslo Pass!

Disabled access, free Internet connection. RestaurantTolvte on the ^12th floor (!) overlooking the fjord. Café MUNCH deli & café on the first floor with terrace and cocktail bar on the top floor.

This Museum of Perspective aims to be provocative and full of humanism, respect and open-mindedness through its collections and exhibitions. It offers temporary photo exhibitions on the history of the city of Tromsø, as well as exhibitions of contemporary art, with the aim of presenting history from different angles. Anyone who loves photography will be satisfied. A beautiful black and white exhibition takes you back to Tromsø and Norway in the 1960s. A good introduction to the city, its region and its people, quick and free.