Norway’s new Museum of the Viking Age has shared a sneak peek at some of its exhibits ahead of opening in 2027.
The University of Oslo’s Viking Ship Museum closed for a major refurbishment and expansion in 2021. When it reopens, it will be called the Museum of the Viking Age.
The new museum will still display three of the world’s oldest surviving Viking ships – the Oseberg, Gokstad and Tune ships. It will also showcase around 5,500 Viking treasures, including artefacts from the Oseberg, Gokstad, Tune and Borre burial sites.
“Our visitors will get up close to the best-preserved Viking ships in the world’s leading Viking-age collection,” museum communications adviser Mari Parelius Wammer told Forbes.
“The new museum will be more than three times the size of the old Viking Ship Museum. While the former museum exhibited three ships and approximately 350 artefacts, the new museum will exhibit more than 5,500 objects, covering a much broader part of Viking age history.”
As above, the new museum will be over three times the size of the Viking Ship Museum. In total, it will offer approximately 13,000 square metres of space.
In addition to the ships and artefacts, the Museum of the Viking Age will include a restaurant, shop, lecture hall, shop, laboratory and research centre.
Viking ships on view in new museum
Jan Bill, curator at the Viking Ship Museum, said in 2021: “We are not building a new museum just because we can, but because we have to. The ships and the other objects in here need a better place to stay in the future.”
Upon completion, the Museum of the Viking Age will be Norway’s first cultural institution dedicated to the Viking age.
Meanwhile, the National Museum of Norway – the largest museum in the Nordic countries – opened to the public in Oslo in summer 2022.
Images courtesy of the Museum of the Viking Age
