In January 2014, Kim, Lucas and I visited Oslo, Norway and the city impressed us much more than expected.

Considering it was quite cold out, we spent a lot of our time checking out some of the city’s excellent museums. The Bygdoy area is a peninsula featuring 5 museums, 4 of which we visited.

I’d even consider one of them to be one of my favorite museums in the world!

The Viking Museum Oslo houses three viking ships which were discovered in the Oslo fjord along with many artifacts. The ships date from around 800-900 A.D. The museum is set up in a t-shape with one ship located in each end.

Kim and I really enjoyed this small museum which was packed with impressive viking-age artifacts. I think part of what we liked about the museum was its size. We could go through it without rushing and being overwhelmed by too many items on display.

I just came across some interesting information from Lonely Planet. According to LP, “Norway’s Education and Research Minister has announced an architectural competition to design a new Viking Age Museum at Bygdøy in Oslo“.

The new Viking Museum will supposedly be 3 times as large as the current museum with the idea being to “create a globally leading centre for the dissemination of knowledge about the Viking Age” according to The Norway Post.

The article goes on to say that Norway has the world’s largest collection of Viking artifacts and the project’s goal is to preserve it for future generations to learn about.

Find out more from Lonely Planet here and The Norway Post here.