Stavanger - Norway - page 247

Henrik Ibsen Weg 55, Mosvannsparken. & 51-53-09-00. Admission 30NOK ($4.25) adults and students, free
for children under 16. Tues-Sun 11am-4pm. Bus: 30, 31, 70, 99, 130, 143, 150, 152, 156, or 170.
Stavanger Museum This is a five-part museum that you can visit with
just one ticket. If you want to see the entire museum, expect to spend the bet-
ter part of a day scampering from one point to another across the city. At the
main museum, you'll be given a map with the location of all the museums.
The main museum is called simply the Stavanger Museum, Muségata 16
( & 51-84-27-00 ), open from mid-June to mid-August daily from 11am to
4pm. From June 1 to June 14 and from August 16 to August 31, it is open
Monday to Thursday from 11am to 3pm and Sunday 11am to 4pm. During
other months the museum is open only on Sunday 11am to 4pm. The ticket for
all five museums costs 40NOK ($5.70) for adults, 30NOK ($4.25) for students
and seniors, 10NOK ($1.40) for ages 4 to 6 (free for 3 and under), and 90NOK
($13) for a family ticket.
At the main museum at Muségata, you can see a permanent collection of
stuffed birds and animals from all over the world. The centuries-old history of
Stavanger, dating from the Viking era, is also presented, along with dramatized
sound recordings about Stavanger in the 1800s.
The second museum, Stavanger Sjøfartsmuseum (Maritime Museum),
Nedre Strandgate 17-19, lies in a converted warehouse dating from 1770. Its
permanent exhibition traces the maritime history of Stavanger for the past 2 cen-
turies, from the days of the herring fleets to the booming oil industry of today.
The facade is a trim and shipshape, clapboard-sided, white-painted building
directly on the harborfront. Inside, there's a battered post-and-beam construction
showing how artfully timbers were used by 19th-century craftsmen, a sense of the
dust, dirt, and economic mayhem of the Industrial Revolution, and the pervasive
scent of tar and turpentine. Expect a claustrophobic, dark-toned interior, hun-
dreds of ship models and 19th-century maritime accessories, and a horrendous
sense of how hard life was in 19th- and early-20th-century coastal Norway.
You can visit a general store from the turn of the 20th century, a reconstructed
merchant's apartment from the early 1900s, a reconstructed shipowner's home,
and a sailmaker's loft, along with a memorial room to the philosopher Henrik Stef-
fens. There is also a children's shop on-site. This museum is closed in December.
Norsk Hermetikkmuseum (Norwegian Canning Museum), Øvre
Strandgate 88A, lies in an old canning factory, with exhibitions tracing the fish-
ing industry, Stavanger's main industry before being replaced by the oil indus-
try, from the 1890s to the 1960s. Some of the machinery is still working, and
on the first Sunday of every month, the smoking ovens are stoked up. The pub-
lic can taste newly smoked brisling straight from the ovens. This is the oddest
and quirkiest of Stavanger's museums, and it arouses the most emotion within
the Norwegians who visit it. It's also the least polished and the most earthy of
the town's museums, and the one that most richly and evocatively portrays the
harsh and boring circumstances of factory work during the Industrial Revolu-
tion. It's set within a low-slung clapboard building within a neighborhood of
increasingly gentrified antique cottages. Inside, about 50 antique machines are
displayed, with sepia-toned photographs of how they, along with scores of weary
workers, fitted sardines, herring, and brislings into the galvanized steel tins that
were later shipped to homes throughout Europe. Expect an enduring sense of
the soot, grime, grease, and fish guts that once permeated this place with odors
that stretched for several blocks in all directions. Overall, this museum is one of