Collections

The core of the museum’s collections consists of objects collected for the 1914 Exhibition in Kristiania (Oslo), which marked the 100th anniversary of the Norwegian constitution. The exhibition intended to highlight Norwegian technological and economic development at the time where shipping played an important role. The seafaring and fishing pavilion was located at Skarpsno Park until the fall of 1914. When the exhibition was dismantled, many of the objects were given to the Norwegian Maritime Museum, which was officially founded on 2 December of the same year.

Today, more than one hundred  years after its founding, the Norwegian Maritime Museum collections reflects the technological and cultural development through the past 150 years. In addition to collections of historical and archaeological artefacts, works of art, models, navigational instruments, tools and souvenirs, the museum also documents  Norwegian boatbuilding traditions. These collections include a boat collection, floating vessels such as the schooner Svanen, the rescue vessel RS 1 Colin Archer, and the yacht Venus. Furthermore, there are  survey drawings of Norwegian traditional boats by Bernhard Færøyvik and Arne Emil Christensen, and construction drawings by  well known Norwegian naval architects  Colin Archer, Johan Anker, Bjarne Aas and Jan Herman Linge.

Collection management at the Norwegian Maritime Museum includes collecting, preserving, documenting, and registering artefacts, as well providing analysis of their  cultural and educational value. It is our goal as a museum to make all our collections accessible to the public. Parts of the collections are available at DigitalMuseum and Europeana, with more items added successively.