Bygdøy Peninsula Guide: Fram Polar Ship, Kon-Tiki and Folk Museum

Jutting into the Oslofjord just west of Aker Brygge, the wooded royal peninsula of Bygdøy combines beaches, coastal cycling paths and a working organic royal farm with Norway's great museums of exploration and rural woodcraft. From late March to October, blue Bygdøy ferries (Line B9) sail every 20 minutes from City Hall Pier 3 (Rådhusbrygge 3) straight across the bay in 10 minutes; year-round, red city Bus 30 (towards Bygdøy) runs every 10 minutes from Jernbanetorget and Nationaltheatret right to the museum gates.

1. The Fram Museum (Frammuseet, at Bygdøynes tip)

Housed inside a dramatic A-frame glass-and-timber tent right on the water at the southern tip of the peninsula, the Fram Museum is regularly voted the single best museum in Norway. Standing in the centre of the hall is the intact, three-masted wooden schooner Fram ("Forward"), built in 1892 by Scottish-Norwegian shipbuilder Colin Archer with a rounded oak-and-greenheart hull specifically designed to be lifted upward onto the Arctic pack ice rather than crushed when the sea froze solid. It sailed further north and further south than any wooden vessel in history across three legendary expeditions: Fridtjof Nansen's three-year drift across the Arctic Ocean (1893 to 1896), Otto Sverdrup's mapping of the Canadian Arctic islands (1898 to 1902), and Roald Amundsen's race to the South Pole (1910 to 1912). Unlike most maritime museums, you climb a gangway straight onto the deck and descend into the cramped wooden cabins, mess hall, chart room and diesel engine room, then walk through a freezing sub-zero polar simulator tunnel to reach the adjacent sister ship, Gjøa (the first vessel to navigate the Northwest Passage).

2. The Kon-Tiki Museum (right across the square from Fram)

Dedicated to explorer and writer Thor Heyerdahl, this museum displays the original Kon-Tiki balsa-log raft on which Heyerdahl and five companions sailed 8,000 kilometres across the Pacific Ocean from Peru to Polynesia in 101 days in 1947, alongside the papyrus reed boat Ra II that crossed the Atlantic in 1970.

3. Norsk Folkemuseum (The Norwegian Museum of Cultural History)

At the first bus and ferry stop (Dronningen / Folkemuseet), this 35-acre open-air park gathers 160 historic timber buildings rescued from every valley of Norway. Head straight up the wooded hill to its crown jewel: the Gol Stave Church (Gol stavkirke), built entirely of pine around the year 1200 AD with tiered shingle roofs, carved dragon heads and runic inscriptions inside.