This museum houses the world's most famous polar ship, the "Fram" - the world's strongest wooden ship at the time. Three polar explorers, especially, are associated with it: Frijthof Nansen, Roald Amundsen and Otto Sverdrup. The "Fram" was built by Colin Archer and launched in 1892. Archer was asked to construct a ship capable of withstanding the polar ice so he looked no further than an egg for inspiration. The ship spent much of its time being pushed up and onto the ice and therefore trapped in it, rather than being crushed by it like other ships.