Closed. The best-preserved Viking ships in the world are behind hoardings until the new museum opens.
This page exists to stop you making a wasted journey, because the Viking Ship Museum is in every guidebook and it is shut.
What is in there
Three ships found in burial mounds around the Oslofjord and preserved by the blue clay they were buried in.
The Oseberg ship, excavated in 1904 from a mound in Vestfold. Built around 820, buried in 834 with two women, one of them in her seventies and one about fifty, and an extraordinary quantity of grave goods — a cart, sledges, beds, textiles, tools and animal-head posts carved with a density of ornament that has to be seen to be believed. It is the richest Viking burial ever found.
The Gokstad ship, excavated 1880, a genuine ocean-going vessel, buried with a man in his forties who had been killed in battle.
The Tune ship, more fragmentary.
Together they are the best-preserved Viking ships in existence, and the Oseberg carvings are the finest surviving examples of the art.
Why it is closed
The museum, built in the 1920s and 30s, was too small, too damp and structurally unable to protect the ships. Monitoring showed the Oseberg ship in particular was deteriorating, and the vibration from visitors and traffic was part of the problem.
It closed in 2021 for the construction of the Museum of the Viking Age around and over the existing building — a much larger facility designed to stabilise the ships permanently.
Moving them is the hard part. The Oseberg ship cannot simply be picked up, and a great deal of engineering has gone into supporting it in place while a building goes up around it.
The project has been delayed and has run over budget, more than once. Opening has been pushed back repeatedly and the current target is towards the end of the decade.
Check the University of Oslo’s museum site for the current date before planning anything around it.
What to do instead
The Fram Museum and Norsk Folkemuseum are both on Bygdøy, both open, and both excellent. The Folkemuseum has the Gol stave church of about 1200, which is the closest thing to a standing medieval Norwegian building you will see in Oslo.
The Historical Museum in the centre, also run by the University, holds the Viking-age gold, silver and weapons, the Gjermundbu helmet — the only more or less complete Viking helmet ever found — and much of what was in the ship burials that is not a ship. It is open and it is very good, and it is what most people should do instead.
Medieval Park at Gamlebyen has the ruins of the original city.
For actual ships, Roskilde in Denmark and Ladby, or the Lofotr museum in Lofoten, are the alternatives — none of them a day trip from here.
More Museums
The Munch Museum
Thirteen floors of a leaning tower that Oslo voted against, holding almost everything Munch owned when he died.
The National Museum
The largest art museum in the Nordic countries, opened in 2022, holding the version of The Scream you know.
The Fram Museum
The ship that went furthest north and furthest south, indoors, and you can walk all over it.