The Minkey apologizes for her lack of posts of late.  She has been distracted.  She wrote a nice post several days ago and lost it all when Microsoft Word crashed (and this is not the first time that Word has crashed, it does not cooperate well with the Mac OS).  Since then many hours of time and research have been devoted to retrieving said file.  It would appear to be un-retrievable.  And she is still quite pissed off about the situation.  She is particularly pissed off at Microsoft and Apple, whom have designed software that does not really work well together, in spite of claims to the contrary.  Perhaps they both could invest in some HPE ALM and UFT software to make sure their damn programs are compatible!

That aside – I will endeavor to continue where we left off — in postcard-perfect Norway.  And then we will work to quickly catch up as the Minkey has moved through Denmark, Sweden and is currently checking out Finland.  My how time flies.

The rest of my time in Oslo was spent flitting about town and visiting some extremely awesome museums.  As you can imagine most of them had to do with maritime excursions.  In fact, I arrived at these museums by crossing the water in a ferry from Oslo, pretending that I was embarking on a voyage into the unknown.  Which is funny, because I could see the land I was headed toward throughout the entire 15-minute journey.

The first stop was The Viking Ship Museum – where they have three (count ‘em three!) intact Viking ships.  Wow.  This museum was great because they did not clutter your mind with 800 different exhibitions from the dawn of time to the present – instead they have approximately four rooms and in three of the rooms is a ship – the fourth room includes all the items that were found with said ships.  These ships date back to about 815AD …  yeah, way way way back.  The only reason they are even slightly preserved is because they were used as part of the burial for some high-ranking Vikings.  You had to be pretty darn special to get buried with your ship (and your dog, horse, cat, etc).  Speculation is that these folks were Kings and Queens.

The Vikings sent you off to Valhalla with a large retinue of household items (including some ‘thralls’ or slaves…).  These three gravesites were fabulous finds though all the valuables had been stolen long ago (think jewelry and fine swords).  These folks were even sent off with sleds and wagons – in some cases multiple sleds.  By the way, there are many combs that they found, which seems odd to me.  Apparently Vikings were extremely concerned with having well-coiffed hair, who knew?

It is startling to walk into a room and come face to face with a real live Viking ship.  I can’t imagine what you might have thought if you happened to be on shore and saw Viking ships approaching…   They are definitely intimidating.  One of the ships was purely ceremonial and is fairly shallow – for slowly gliding across becalmed fjords, I suppose.  It has the richest decoration complete with the carved serpents at prow and stern.  Just like the movies, no really, it is!  The other two ships were built to withstand journeys on the open ocean.  They have much higher sides and are a size or two larger than the ceremonial ship.  Interesting tidbit, there are no benches on these ships, the crew sat on their sea-chests!  Conservation of space, no doubt.

After getting my fill of Viking history, a short walk away was The Kon-Tiki Museum.  Yet another intrepid maritime explorer, Thor Heyerdahl, and ALL of his original rafts!  The actual Kon-Tiki raft is right smack in the middle of this museum.  They spin out the entire tale from Heyerdahl’s initial theories on native movement from South America to Polynesia, to his crazy plan to build a balsa-wood raft and sail across the pacific using only the tides to steer and push them …   Unfortunately, (for Heyerdahl), there are many scientists today who point out countless holes in his theories.  In fact, based on what I read, they believe he was pretty much completely wrong.  Ah, well.  It was a gutsy (maybe foolhardy) move on his part.  He convinced several other guys to accompany him and they filmed their voyage.  This documentary of the Kon-Tiki eventually won an Academy Award (!) Again, who knew?

It is hard to imagine how different the world was in 1947 when Heyerdahl and his crew set sail.  Think of the biggest news stories of today, the ones that get covered in tabloids and ‘real’ news outlets – that was what this voyage was like for the world.  Upon successfully reaching an atoll in the Polynesian Islands they were catapulted into super-stardom.  Most had predicted that they would never be seen again.  This museum even covers the rage for all things Polynesian and all things ‘Kon-Tiki’ which was freely used to advertise just about anything.  Very cool place, they even go into his expeditions on Easter Island.  Mr. Heyerdahl was a bit of a philosopher too, as evidenced by this quote:

“Borders I have never seen one. But I have heard they exist in the minds of some people.”

Food for thought that…

Still not completely satiated with maritime adventures, I wandered into the Fram Museum.  Anybody out there know what the Fram is?  Of course!  It’s a polar expedition ship!  They actually have TWO polar expeditions ships at this museum, Fram and Gjoa.  Remember the story of Amundsen and Scott and the race to the South Pole?  Well, this museum covers that saga in excruciating detail.  Like, down to the boots, equipment, diaries, furniture, how they shaved, what they ate, what kind of toilet paper they had (ok, maybe not quite that far), if it went on that expedition I believe this museum has it.  Let’s just say I got a bit overwhelmed.

The coolest thing you can do here is literally walk around on the Fram itself down into the cabins, offices, kitchen, and engine room.  That was slick.  The one nagging issue I had was with the ship’s bell.  It is in plain view on the main deck and at least one out of every two people had to ring that damn bell.  Over and over again.  Enough to drive you a little bit crazy.  I controlled myself as it would not look good for an American tourist to attack a busload of Easter European senior citizens…

But the story about the race to the South Pole – well that is worthy of film (several films, look ‘em up!).  It’s not a happy story – unless you were the Norwegians who got to the South Pole first, planted the Norwegian flag and left a letter (for the Scott team…).  Here is my take on what the letter probably actually said:  ‘Dear Mr. Scott and crew, we beat you and we are beyond thrilled.  Who was the idiot in your crew that decided to use donkeys instead of dogs?  Good luck on the return journey you English pig-dogs.’  Or something along those lines.

Ok, so I realize it’s not nice to poke fun at horrible tragedies – and in the end the Scott party did not make it back – and yes, it’s heart wrenchingly sad because we have their final words.  The four men continued to document what was happening until they could no longer write.  There is a whole lot of discussion out there on why the Scott party failed and subsequently died, mainly due to many mistakes in their overall plan.  And this museum is littered with the history of all the men who tried to sail somewhere in the polar regions (mostly trying to find the Northwest Passage – by the way, that was Amundsen who finally did that successfully too).  Fascinating stuff – and fun for the kids too!

Last but not least I returned to Oslo proper and made my way to the Opera House.  This is some kind of amazing architecture.  The building is sitting on water and the roof is angled such that it slants to the ground (well, the water actually).  The slanted parts of the roof are on either side of a square which is mostly glass.  This means people can walk up the roof all the way to the top of the triangle and wander around on top of the glass square and enjoy a fabulous view of Oslo.  It’s a great place to sit and soak in some sun and contemplate life.  Especially after spending so much time in the arctic today!

Stay tuned – the real live trip to the arctic is just around the corner!