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Monday, November 7, 2011

Medieval Church Ruins in Oslo

There was a tour around the medieval ruins of Oslo. Unfortunately what they did not say in the email about it was that it would be in Norwegian so my American friend Sydney and I were pretty much lost the entire time and just looked around and took pictures while the guide was talking. Our Old Norse instructor was there so he would occasionally give us a very condensed version of what the main points were. We started by going around St. Olav's monastery. 


remains of the monastery's cloisters with a model of the monastery in the middle
Inside with some questionably but unlikely medieval wall paintings.
gates into St Hallvard Cathedral ruins.


It would be lovely to sit on that bench on a warm summer day

A nice lady translated this from Latin for us. I can't remember exactly but a man, his wife, and their unborn child were buried here in the hopes of rising again on Doomsday.


Kongsgården
 From the sign: The king's residence in Oslo from about the year 1000 until the 1300’s, when it became the canon’s residence up until the Reformation in the 1500s. The oldest finds on the site are part of a simple, circular fort consisting of a moat and some wooden buildings. A find of German and English coins put the construction of the fort between 1040 and 1060, during the rule of Harald Hardråde (Harald the Hard Ruler). Construction of the stone fort began in the 1200’s during the rule of Håkon Håkonsson. The Kings residence was a citadel, dwelling and meeting place for the King and his men when they were in Oslo. Akershus Fortress took over these functions in the 1300’s and gradually became the administrative center for this part of Norway. Large parts of the ruins from the King’s residence were removed in 1890 when a locomotive workshop was built on the site.


I didn't take a picture because I thought it might be a little creepy but one the of program admin workers brought her young (less than 2 years I think) child with her and she (? I didn't ask. It was wearing what we would probably consider boy clothes but here is just unisex but it had a butterfly face painting done so I'm guessing girl) was climbing all over the ruins. That is amazing to me. I could only wish I grew up being surrounded by remnants of medieval life. In Canada something is a hundred years old and it's considered old and historical. These rocks that some kid is crawling on were placed there a thousand years ago and it's nothing special to them. Just a medieval playground. I'm jealous.

We then got a special tour of a rock magazine. Parts of the talk were translated to us by a nice lady who works there.
Runestones!

A young runologist


Baptismal font
















-Ash the Viking

1 comment:

  1. That happens to me all the time here. The people here don't get how lucky they are to have 1000 year old relics hanging about! I'm definitely jealous of Europe's historical sites!

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