The original Oslo, abandoned after a fire in 1624, now a field of ruins with a new lake over the old shoreline.
Oslo was not always where it is now. The medieval city stood a kilometre and a half east, at the mouth of the Alna river below the Ekeberg ridge, and it was abandoned in 1624.
The original city
Founded around 1040 — traditionally by Harald Hardrada in 1048, though archaeology suggests a settlement somewhat earlier — it became a bishop’s seat around 1070 and the capital of Norway under Håkon V in 1299.
At its medieval height it had perhaps 3,000 people, nine churches, several monasteries, a royal manor and a cathedral.
Then the Black Death arrived in 1349 and killed something like half to two-thirds of the population of Norway. The country lost its independence into union with Denmark in 1380, the archbishopric and the court drifted to Copenhagen, and Oslo spent two centuries as a provincial town.
The fire
Oslo burned frequently — it was a town built of wood. The fire of 1624 burned for three days and destroyed almost all of it.
Christian IV of Denmark came to look at the ruins and made a decision: rather than rebuild in place, the city would move west, under the guns of Akershus Fortress, be laid out on a grid, and be built in brick and stone with fire regulations.
He renamed it Christiania after himself. It kept that name until 1925, when Norway — independent for twenty years — restored the old one.
The original site was left to fields and, later, to railway yards and container storage.
What is there now
Middelalderparken, laid out over the excavated ruins.
St Hallvard’s Cathedral — foundations only, but the full plan is legible. Hallvard Vebjørnsson is Oslo’s patron saint and he is on the city’s seal.
The Royal Manor — the Kongsgården, the medieval king’s residence.
St Mary’s Church, St Clement’s, and the Olavsklosteret ruins.
The medieval water line. A shallow artificial lake was created to mark where the shoreline actually was, so you can see that the ruins stood on the water’s edge. Land in the Oslofjord has risen substantially since the Middle Ages.
The park has been reworked repeatedly as the surrounding Bjørvika development advanced, and the relationship between the ruins and the new apartment blocks around them is not always comfortable.
Gamlebyen
The surrounding Old Town district is ordinary residential Oslo, not a preserved quarter, and it is worth a walk. Ekebergsletta and Ekebergparken rise directly behind it.
Oslo Ladegård, a baroque house built on the bishop’s medieval palace, has vaults from around 1300 underneath and opens for occasional tours.
Practical
Free and permanently open.
It is a fifteen-minute walk from the Opera House and MUNCH along the water, which is the natural way to arrive.
The Historical Museum in the centre holds nearly all the objects; this is the ground they came out of.
