A ski jump at the end of a metro line, with the world's oldest ski museum inside the hill under it.
There has been a ski jump on this hill since 1892, and it has been rebuilt nineteen times. The current one, a cantilevered steel structure by the Danish practice JDS, opened in 2010 and is visible from most of central Oslo.
The remarkable thing is that you get to it on the metro, in about twenty-five minutes from the middle of the city, on a normal ticket.
The jump
The tower can be climbed — by lift and then stairs — to a viewing platform at the top of the in-run, 60 metres above the hill and about 417 metres above sea level.
The view is the whole city, the fjord and the islands, and it is the best panorama in Oslo. It is also, standing at the top of the in-run and looking down, a very direct explanation of what ski jumpers actually do.
There is a zip line from the top down the landing slope for those who want it, and a ski simulator at the bottom.
The Ski Museum
Inside the hill under the jump, and it is the oldest ski museum in the world, opened in 1923.
4,000 years of skiing. The oldest object is a ski fragment dated to around 600 AD, and there are rock carvings from far earlier. Skiing in Norway was transport before it was sport, and the museum makes that case properly.
The polar section is the strong part: equipment from Nansen’s 1888 crossing of Greenland and Amundsen’s 1911 journey to the South Pole, including gear that went the whole way. Norway’s polar story and its ski story are the same story, and this is where that becomes obvious.
Entry to the museum includes the tower.
The Holmenkollen Ski Festival
Held every March since 1892, and it is one of the great events of the Norwegian year — World Cup ski jumping and cross-country over several days, with a crowd in the tens of thousands camping on the hill.
The 50 km cross-country race is the one that matters. If you are in Oslo that week, go; if you are trying to book a hotel that week, do not expect to.
Around it
Holmenkollen Chapel, a stave-style church of 1903, rebuilt after an arson attack in 1992.
The Holmenkollen Park Hotel, a vast dragon-style timber building of 1894 that is worth looking at from outside.
Nordmarka begins immediately behind, and this is one of the main gateways into it.
Practical
T-bane line 1, which is an ordinary metro that climbs into the forest. Holmenkollen station, then about ten minutes uphill.
Frognerseteren, one stop further and higher, has a wooden lodge restaurant from 1891 serving rømmegrøt and a famous apple cake, and the walk down from there to the jump is the best version of this trip.
In winter, both stations put you straight onto the floodlit cross-country trails.
More Landmarks
The Opera House
A building you are meant to walk on. The roof is a public square that rises out of the fjord, and it costs nothing.
Akershus Fortress
Seven hundred years of fortification on a headland over the fjord, never taken by an enemy, and free to walk into.
Oslo City Hall
Two brown brick towers that Oslo has never entirely forgiven, and the room where the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded.