Excursion - The Viking Ship Museum

From The "Guide" from the Universitetets Oldsaksamling (1987):

The Oseberg ship was excavated in 1904...part of an exceptionally...equipped burial...the ship and many of the objects in it were broken into thousands of small fragments...After almost 15 weeks of work, the find was finally securely stored in Oslo...all the pieces of the ship had been measured and numbered during the excavation...the ship was rebuilt in a temporary building in the grounds of the University...In 1926 it was moved to the Viking Ship Hall...One of the sledges was pieced together from 1,061 fragments...the only Viking Age wagon found in Norway as yet is this one from Oseberg...the Gokstad ship was excavated in 1880 and moved to the Hall in 1929...whereas the Oseberg find included 4 sledges and a wagon, the Gokstad burial was equipped with one sledge and three small boats...the [burial] chambers [of both ships] were tent-shaped...

...and then my eyes glazed over and I stopped reading...

Basically, everything was wrecked when it was found, but enterprising engineers and archeologists perservered and managed to put everything back together, preserving the wood with the latest technology (and linseed oil).

The ship-building was phenominal and the carving was over-the-top; all I could think was that Norwegian winters must certainly be long...

Oseburg

Those who have known me for a long time, will understand when I say
this reminds me of a friend who is also a carving artist...
I thought at the time that if he could see the stuff in this museum,
his head would probably explode...he would love spending time reproducing
some of the things I saw...

burial chamber and boats (Gokstad)

Gokstad

 

Next up...more ships...of the Pacific, Atlantic and Polar kind...

Dave's Birthday!

We interrupt the travelogue to bring you Dave's Birthday!!!

After a regular Saturday morning, we dressed up...

and went to the Chocolate Festival in Addison...very crowded, but it was nice to meet the vendors - the outside section was vendors who sold ingredients and items for making chocolates and the inner section was chocolatiers and restaurants who specialized in a chocolate dessert...

and everyone had samples and/or items for sale...

Afterwards, we sat outside for a little while to recover...and Dave took a moment to read his many good wishes on Facebook and in text messages...

The weather was wonderful (we think Fall may be here...), so we walked around the area just to see what was there...

There were Men at Work...

...making pizza...

...and getting ready for Oktoberfest...

and just interesting things to see...

Then we went back to the car and headed over to our favorite bookstore for books and something small to tide us over for a few hours...

We took a side trip to locate the next restaurant on our hit list before heading to Local in time for our reservation...

Where Chef Tracy Miller outdid herself in the preparation of our steak special...

Dave finished it off with one of their home-made min-sundaes...I don't know where he found the room!

It was a lot of fun!

Happy 66th Dave!!

Excursion - Views from a bus

We stopped at some very interesting places and each of those will have separate posts.

But we also saw views from the bus that I found worth noting...

This was as close to the Palace as we came - we could have taken an individual tour of it during the week, but it just didn't seem worth the effort...



This building was intriguing..all glass and mesh...Oslo seems torn between being a historical city and being thoroughly modern...

It was pointed out by our guide that a boat is essential in Norway...this is just one of the smaller docking areas we saw from the road...

And, of course, we passed through the King's land, so we saw the King's cows...

 

 and the King's Farm...

 

Their suburbs seem crowded... 

And, since the King wouldn't want to stay in town during the Summer, he has a Summer Residence:

The countryside is beautiful...

But I still find the variety of city architecture fascinating...if it hadn't been for the bus ride, I wouldn't have seen these buildings...

This is their new Opera house, of which they are very proud...

I found the size of their ferries impressive -

 

But I did note that their traffic is as bad in Oslo as it is in Dallas!

Next up...The Viking Ship Museum

Excursion - in many parts

One day of the conference is usually devoted to an excursion or two, usually one has to choose when registering.  We signed up for the Oslo tour because it contained places we wanted to see, such as the Viking Ship museum.

Of course, where we had to pick up the buses was quite a walk from the hotel, so we saw even more interesting buildings, statues and architectural details.

In that last photo of Dave, he's faking it - we were both upset because his camera disappeared and we didn't notice until we were getting ready to walk to the bus...we thought he had left it in the restaurant where we had dinner the night before, so we asked the hotel desk to please call the restaurant when they opened and inquire.  After we returned from the excursion and got back to the hotel, it turns out, he had left it at the computer in the hotel lobby and someone had turned it in...the morning people didn't know, but the evening shift knew as soon as we asked!  What a relief!

Anyhoo - back to the excursion...