If I had a boat

I’d go out on the ocean

And if I had a pony

I’d ride him on my boat

And we could all together

Go out on the ocean

Me upon my pony on my boat

– L. Lovett

The Vikings had a boat. They had a lot of boats. And we saw a few of them today. The sun was out when we woke up, a real surprise given the forecast. So we took advantage and hit the museums on Bygdøy. It’s a peninsula into the Oslo fjord, just a few minutes from downtown. You could drive or take public transit but we’ve already done planes, trains and automobiles. So we took a boat to see the boats. It’s a small passenger ferry and the ride is about fifteen minutes. We enjoyed it and got some photos from water-level. See Smugmug. We’re almost over 100 photos up there now. You can skip to the last page to see the latest.

Once on Bygdøy you walk almost a kilometer to the Viking Ship Museum. They have three boats there that date back to about 900AD. They are well preserved because it was common to bury wealthy people in their boats. They loaded the boat with food, drink, money, jewelry and other things the dead person would need in the next life; then wrapped it in cloth (the sails maybe) and buried it in clay. Over the years grave robbers got the money and jewelry but left the other artifacts. In the 1800’s and early 1900’s archeologists uncovered the boats and eventually put them on display.

The Vikings were great sailors and went as far as America (before it was called that of course) in these fairly small boats. Our passenger ferry is bigger!

From Vikings to more modern Norwegians we went by going to the Kon-Tiki Museum. In 1947 Thor Heyerdahl and some other crazy Norwegians got in an even smaller boat made out of balsa logs and sailed from South American to Easter Island. They did it to prove a point about how cultures could have mixed and cooperated hundreds of years ago. Today it just sounds like another horrible reality TV show.

From there we went to the Fram Museum. The Fram was a polar exploration boat and it made trips to both the North and South poles. The expeditions were about 100 years ago and this is one serious boat. It had to be to break through the ice. Even so, they only got so far and then set out by dog sled to get to the actually poles.

After the return trip, on yes, a boat, we went to Bakefri, the only entirely gluten-free restaurant in Oslo. Norwegians are like the Danes and the Swedes; they eat a TON of bread. It’s pretty common to see people eat three rolls to start breakfast; one with butter, one with jam and one with marmalade. So we are surprised by how gluten-free-friendly the town is. We hear McDonalds and Burger King have gluten-free hamburger buns. We have not checked that out. Bakefri was excellent. They have the best tasting gluten-free bread we’ve ever had. We both had sandwiches and dessert. A common dessert here is a thin, sweet waffle with strawberry jam. And we got some rolls for the road.

Press button to start fountain.

We rested at the hotel for a while and then went out for dinner. We ate at ‘Eataly’ but it does not seem related to Mario Batali’s Eataly in New York City. Later we sat people-watched at the Aker Brygge (fancy shopping mall) and took a nice walk in the sun back to our hotel.