Today we decided to use the hop on hop off bus to have a look at Oslo from the road this time so after breakfast we walked round to the National Museum where the bus starts and returned to Bygdoy where we had visited the Folk and Viking Museums last time we were here, this time we went to the Fram Museum which is dedicated to the various polar expeditions on both the Fram and the Gjoa. The first thing we did was head through to the Gjoa Building. This building houses the Gjoa which was the ship that Amundsen used when he was the first person to successfully navigate the northwest passage. I hadn’t realised how early on people started looking for this route, the first people to explore were in medieval times but the route wasn’t found until Amundsen’s successful navigation 400 years later. I also hadn’t realised how long he actually spent at the poles. The expedition on the Gjoa was actually 3 years from 1903 – 1906 the first two years were spent in Gjoa Haven mapping the North Magnetic Pole, he also proved that the Magnetic Pole moves over time, after this they then actually successfully managed to navigate the passage all of this was done is what seemed to be a very small ship. From here we watched a short film on polar history then returned to the Fram Museum to have a look round the Fram and the various exhibitions in this building. Having looked at the routes that Amundsen and Scott took it wasn’t really surprising that Amundsen got to the South Pole first, also his experience of living with the Inuit definitely served him well as he only took dogs and sleighs and everyone onboard had a trade so that they could contribute in some way. They even worked on the weight of the sleigh they managed to reduce it from 76kg to 28kg they even reduced the amount of wood in the boxes to make them lighter and took everything out of the packaging so that this weight wasn’t included, despite all this the sleighs fully loaded still weighed 300kg which they pulled for about 8 hours a day. Scott took ponies who couldn’t cope with the snow and mechanised sleighs, the first sleigh actually fell through the ice as they were offloading it off the ship and they lost the other two before they got very far. Amundsen even realised that Greenland dogs would eat their own kind whereas Alaskan dogs wouldn’t. This was almost certainly one of my favourite museums, there were loads of photos from the various expeditions and although there was quite a lot of info to absorb it wasn’t too overwhelming and being able to walk around the ships that had been to the North and South Poles at the start of the 1900s was fantastic. We spent 3.5 hours here then came out and got back on the hop on hop off bus to continue our journey. We also got off at the Vigeland Park which is Oslo’s biggest inner city park and is also the largest sculpture park by a single artist as it has over 200 pieces by Gustav Vigeland. The collection is slightly weird all of the statues (sculptures) are naked and in a variety of poses and situations, some just sitting or standing next to each other, others a little strange like a naked man juggling babies or at least thats what it looked like he was doing! We walked all round the park then went back to the bus and finished our tour back at the waterfront where we had something to eat then went back to the hotel to relax and plan what we are going to do tomorrow.
