The Norwegian Folk Museum

The Norwegian Folk Museum has a really interesting set-up. It is set up with a number of small farms, as well as an old city block from Oslo, and of course the stave church.
Here is one of the storage sheds

this is the interior of a typical storage shed- at least the lower level

A small farm

interior of farm house- dating from 1600's I think

This is an open-hearth style house, it dates from 1390's

this main room in the open-hearth house was everything. The whole family shared the two beds on either side of the fire. In the summer the children might sleep in the barn or storage houses.

A newer farm house, from the 1700's I believe

you can see the fireplace/stove is nicer, and there are windows allowing substantially more light than the older houses.

I believe this one was from the late 1500's or early 1600's

interior of farm house, yes that fire was real

A traditional Norwegian Engagement "ring".  The prospective bridegroom would carve the flat iron for the girl he wished to marry, if she accepted they were engaged, if not he had to carve a different one for the next girl he wanted to propose to.

The oldest inhabited house at the folk museum, this house dates from 1150

Carving on the doorway

The interior of this old house is kinda bland.

these ladies were making delicious Lufsa

This was at the pottery workshop, they make and sell the pottery there.

This is from the old city section, I think it is more like several blocks of buildings.

A pretty light in one of the apartment building

The concession stand in the folk museum

Robyn and I at the stave church

Door to the church

roof of the stave church

Detail of roof dragon

interior of church

top of staves

exterior of Sami house

interior

traditional Sami costumes

Volcanos and other fun things

I admit it, I have been lazy since I got back form Scotland. My bad.

photos from remote scotland

Skye

Skye

Skye

Invermorriston

Scottish Edition...

For our purposes, imagine bagpipe music playing in the background.
I am in Inverness right now, got here this morning. So far, I love it. My hostel is weird. It has an awesome kitchen, but the shower is confounding and the room situation is strange. I get the feeling that people have been living here a long time.
Inverness is very pretty, but I love Edinburgh. I think I could happily live there. I was so... refreshed, relieved, happy,  and peaceful while I was there it made it hard to leave. It is going to be hard going back to Oslo. While I enjoy Oslo, it does not feel like home; Edinburgh does. So my grammar and spelling is probably not the best right now, I have just finished a bit of wine. Thats right, wine is an affordable price here. No wonder I like it.
A few of my favorites:

Saturday adventures...

Today I went to a little market with Robyn. It was mostly older stuff antiques and the like, but there was also some clothing and handmade goods. It was smaller than we expected, but as this was the first weekend it opened for the season I expect it will grow as summer approaches.
I got something very awesome and useful for our coming adventures to the opera.

While waiting for Robyn at Majorstuen station I saw amazing displays of national pride. There were people with the Norwegian flag painted on their face, and almost everyone had either a flag or clothing the colors of the flag on (or both). And a few lonely Swedes.

 I was confused, I know that the national day is May 17th. Then I noticed the amount of people with ski's walking around and quickly deduced that it had something to do with Holmenkollen  (thats a big ski jump). As nuts as the Norwegians are about skiing, this could be another national holiday. Seriously, I think they are worse than Canada and hockey, or India and cricket, or England and (real) football, or the US with (shit) football. Turns out that today and tomorrow are some sort of Nordic world cup for skiing. Anyhow, today was fun and intresting. I got opera glasses, loose leaf tea (yum!), and had a delicious burger and beer with Robyn at a very nice pub (double yum, eating out is such a treat).