Another perfect morning. The ship does not dock until 10am but from 8 onwards we are saling into the Oslo Fjord.
The scenery is beautiful and the sea is flat. There are apparently around 40 islands we will pass before we reach the dock. Some inhabited and some not.
The fjord was a battle ground in the Second World War as the Germans attempted to take Norway from the sea. The German battleship was caught unawares when the Norwegians torpedoed it from one of the islands and it sank upside down and this is where it still lays today.
We don't have a tour booked for Oslo so we buy tickets for the hop on hop off bus, this will give us a good look around and we can chose where we want to get off.
Our first stop is the Viking Museum and that is very interesting. Inside there are 3 actual Viking ships, not replicas that were discovered in 3 burial mounds.
The Oseberg ship was built around 820AD and was used as a burial ship for a woman and her maid servant in 834AD.
The women were laid out in a bed in the burial chamber and the woman is thought to have been someone of power and importance as the ship contained a collection of burial gifts including 3 sledges, a wagon and the skeletons of 12 horses. The gifts are buried with the bodies to assist with the journey to the realm of the dead.
The Gokstad ship was built around 890AD and was used as a burial ship for a chieftain. He too was buried with many gifts. Any weapons or gold or jewels ad been stolen from the grave but the remains of 12 horses, 6 dogs and a peacock were found as well as a harness, kitchen utensils, 3 small boats and much more. The ship is 23 metres long and 5 metres wide just to give you a bit of an idea of what we have seen.
The boats were so well preserved when they were found because of the type of soil they were buried under. The museum has a collection of over a million artifacts that have been collected over 200 years. With the aid of technology today, the researchers are continuing to find out more about these ancient times. It was more interesting than I thought it would be !
Just a short walk away is the Norsk Folk Museum. This is an open air display of life in Norway from 1500 to today.
About 160 historic buildings have been relocated to the museum and displayed as they would have been in their time.
We are fortunate to arrive in time for a guided tour. A pretty young girl dressed in traditional Norwegian clothes takes us to the oldest homes to demonstrate life in the 1500's. All of these buildings are made of logs and the people did not live in villages but because they were mostly farmers, they built their homes on the land and there was usually the home, the storehouse and maybe a stable, and a cowshed . The homes were basically one room with a fire pit in the middle where all the cooking was done. Our guide was very informative and she certainly came across as very passionate about her ancestors and proud of the fact that they had all of these buildings here to show how it was in the past. We visited another house from probably te 1600's and while it was still pretty much one room, the fire was now in a proper fire place in te corner of the room. There were more furnishings and windows.
The last building we visited with her was the Stave Church. It was a church from the 1300's and while the exterior had been largely reconstructed the interior was the original material and structure.
It was very dark inside, and the only lighting would have been candles at the alter. The size of the logs used to build it were huge and once again you have to be amazed at the engineering ability of the people of these times. In the 1300's there was no seating in the church. There was a bench around the wall for the elderly to sit if needed.
After the tour we continue on our own to the other eras. It's a wonderful collection of houses complete with furnishings and places of business, banks, shops, its so cool to see all this memorabilia and set out in the streets as it would have been back in the day.
We have spent ages here but it has been so interesting.
Eventually the bus comes and we get to our next stop, not far from the ship, its the Akershus Castle.
The castle was originally built as a medieval fortified castle around 1300. Being right on the entrance to Oslo it's main purpose was to defend the city. In the first half of the 17th century during the reign of the Danish - Norwegian king Christian IV it was rebuilt and surrounded by a bastion fortress.
Today it is used as representation rooms of the Norwegian Government. Our self guided tour takes us down into the dungeon, the mausoleum where King Haakon VII and Queen Maud are resting in a white marble sarcophagus, King Olav V and Crown Princess Martha in a green bronze one and there is a crypt where 3 members of the medieval royal family have been laid to rest. There are many rooms connected by spiral stair cases. It's a great castle, the stone walls are 3 metres thick!
Within the grounds of the castle is Norway's Resistance Museum it is on the spot where the Norwegian Patriots were executed by the Germans in the Second World War. This museum documents the 5 years of occupation and foreign rule. Once again, my knowledge of this history is found wanting, but I leave the museum a bit better informed.
It's now 4pm and we are so close to the ship we decide to return, get something to eat and drink before heading out for a stroll along the wharf.
It's so warm and there are people everywhere sun baking, sipping wine and swimming. We dipped our toes in the water so at least we can say we have been in the Baltic Sea.
Sunset tonight is at 10:05pm and we have another hundred photos of it from our balcony. Its so calm and still warm rand we are right now sitting on our balcony having a cuppa and listening to our new American Neighbours talking so loud about so many things that are just plain incorrect! And Glenn is still taking photos!
Tomorrow is a cruising day as we go from Oslo to Bergen. It will be nice to stay put and watch the world go by. But there is never nothing to do on board.