The Fram Museum

 Our whole reason for spending 2 nights in Oslo before heading home was to visit the one museum we had missed on our previous trip, the one devoted entirely to the polar vessel Fram.  Designed and built by Fridtjof Nansen in 1893, it was purpose-built to get caught in the ice and carried toward the North Pole by the currents. He expected this to take 3 years, but packed supplies for 5.  Nansen expected the current to actually cross the pole, but sadly found that it turned south at only 83° North. He and one companion left the ice-bound ship and skied farther north, to 86°13.6'N (the closest to the pole anyone had come at that time), but had to give up the attempt in order to get far enough south to survive the coming winter.  Here's a map:

Red line--Fram's route to Siberia, July-Sept.1893

Blue line--Fram trapped in the ice and drifting, Sept. 1893-Aug. 1896

Gray line--Nansen & Johansen's ski trip to Farthest North, and then back to Franz Josef Land where they overwintered in a snow cave and then a shelter they built of driftwood--March 1895-June 1896

Pink line--Nansen & Johansen's trip back to Tromsø, Norway--August 1896

Yellow line--Fram sailing from Spitsbergen back to Norway--August 1896

You can read more than you probably want to know about this on the museum's website here: https://frammuseum.no/polar-history/expeditions/the-first-fram-expedition-1893-1896/  We also highly recommend reading about the crossing of Greenland on skis!

The ship not only survived being caught in the ice (it was designed to ride up onto the ice instead of being crushed), it went on two more expeditions.  One captained by Otto Sverdrup, which mapped a lot of the islands of Northwest Greenland and Northeast Canada, and one led by Roald Amundsen. This last was originally supposed to go to the North Pole, but when Robert Peary announced he had reached this goal, Amundsen set his sights on the South Pole instead. The trusty Fram managed the feat.

At any rate, we were both looking forward to seeing this famous ship in reality.  We should have been a bit more patient, though--our 11 AM arrival coincided with several buses of tourists from a Holland America ship.  So it was very crowded and HOT in the upper reaches of the museum.

Fridtjof Nansen

Fridtjof Nansen

The windmill provided electric lighting inside the ship...sometimes.

The galley

The private cabins were....cozy. I think this is Henrik Greve Blessing.

I should have taken pics of the signage, but it was so hot in there I just wanted OUT!

The main "saloon"

Engine

Dining room

Another solo cabin

Dear to my heart! For repairing clothing and sails.

My pics are pretty bad, even though I went ahead and included them here.  The scale was hard to capture with a phone, and the camera was even worse.  Here are some from the Museum's site, mostly taken by T. Storm Halvorsen.

There were cool videos on the walls above the ship.

A storm at sea, icebergs....

After touring the ship (warning: once you start inside it, you have to follow the entire path before you come back up on deck!), we wanted to cool off, so went outside and found a shady bench, some ice cream bars, and water.  Then we went back in (much less crowded now) and followed signs for "The Nansen Photographs"....which were much farther away than it seemed.  The sign pointed downstairs.  No photographs, but an interesting display of how to make bronze castings of polar explorers.  Another sign at the end of the hall pointed up some more stairs....where there was another ship!  This proved to be the Gjøa, the ship in which Amundsen became the first to go through the Northwest Passage.

Amundsen and Nansen both had one striking quality for their time--both believed that the native people of the North had a lot of wisdom about how to travel and survive in Arctic conditions.  Both took advice from the Inuit as to clothing and the building and use of kayaks, as well as how to hunt the native creatures.  There was a lot of interesting information on their interactions with these "primitive" people...but still no photos.

The photos finally revealed themselves on the 2nd level of what was actually an entirely different building from the Fram. But by this point we were both getting tired of "museuming", so we looked fairly briefly at the photos we'd tried so hard to find, and then made our way back downstairs, through the hall (actually going under the street above), and back out to our shady bench with a view of the harbor. More water and ice cream, and then we called a taxi on the handy OsloTaxi app.

There were LOTS of photos, once we finally found them.

And here are some pics taken during the 1st Fram Expedition, by Nansen or one of the crew. Most I found through Getty Images...there are lots more for those interested.

Fram caught in the ice, 1893 (photo by F. Nansen)

Imagine spending 3 years here, with 8 other people.

"Observing the Eclipse of the Sun", April 1894

They carried out many scientific studies

"Home-sickness", June 1894

"Summer Scene", July 1894

Nansen (2nd from left) and Johansen (2nd from right) depart for the North Pole, March 1895

"The Den" on Franz Josef Land, where Nansen and Johansen over-wintered

On the northern tip of Franz Josef Land they had to build a shelter for their winter quarters. They hacked away at the surface to make a hollow and then surround­ed this area with stone walls which they filled as best they could with moss. A long pine-log which had been washed ashore served as the ridge-piece, and over this they laid walrus skin. In order to preserve warmth, they refashioned the woolen sleeping bag, so that both of them could creep into it. It was a long winter in the «den», as they called the stone-hut.  They were there from May 1895 until June 1896, when some British explorers simply happened to find them.

Dinner was our favorite Pepes Pizza, only a block from the hotel. 

The next day, we had a 4PM flight to Keflavik, stayed one night at a ridiculously bare-bones hotel (dinner was available at "the Food Hall--it's only a 15-minute walk") with the most pathetic breakfast buffet we've ever encountered, and then caught a 10:45AM flight home, arriving at 2PM.  This proves to be a fairly civilized time to arrive, as you have time for a nap AND to go get enough groceries to get through dinner and breakfast.

So that wraps up our 2026 adventures!