What is the Museum of Cultural History?

Collections The Museum of Cultural History is one of Norway’s largest cultural history museums. It holds the country’s largest prehistoric and medieval archaeological collections, including the Viking ships at Bygdøy, a substantial collection of medieval church objects, a collection of antiquities from the Mediterranean countries, and a rune archive. The museum also has a comprehensive ethnographic collection that includes objects from every continent, as well as Norway’s largest collection of historical coins.

Number of visitors
The Viking Ship Museum is Norway’s most frequently visited museum with around 430 000 visitors a year. The Historical Museum has around 65 000 visitors a year. In addition to the permanent exhibitions, four to six temporary exhibitions are presented each year. The museum also arranges various activities for the general public such as Sunday events, concerts, lectures and different types of presentations for students and children/young people.

Cultural Heritage Act
The Cultural Heritage Act gives the museum the administrative authority for pre-Reformation objects (prior to 1537) and all finds of coins from earlier than 1650, in the ten counties of south-eastern Norway. In collaboration with the Directorate for Cultural Heritage, archaeological excavations are carried out in the same ten counties by the county and municipal authorities and private entrepreneurs.

Research
In addition to the two main disciplines of archaeology and social anthropology, the museum employs specialists in the areas of numismatics, runology, medieval art history, conservation science and chemistry. In these fields the museum has some of Norway’s foremost expertise at its disposition. The museum’s status as a university museum implies that greater resources are devoted to research than at most other museums of cultural history. The scientific staff are required to participate in teaching and information activities.

Preservation and documentation
The museum is also responsible for carrying out more traditional museum tasks such as collection, documentation and preservation. Through a major project, REVITA, a complete review and revision of all the museum’s collections is being undertaken. The project has been launched in connection with the planned move of the museum to a new building in Bjørvika, Oslo, in 2015.

Organisation The Museum of Cultural History is both a museum and a university department, with the same status as the faculties of the University of Oslo. There are currently 120 permanent staff members at the museum, as well as a large, but varying, number of temporary staff. The board has the overall responsibility for the museum. The Museum Director is the museum’s professional and administrative leader, and is responsible for the daily management of the museum along with the heads of the museum’s seven departments. The museum’s organisation otherwise is regulated by the “Regulations for the Museum of Cultural History”, which was compiled by the university’s board in December 2003. These new regulations replaced the previous joint regulations for the two museums associated with the University of Oslo, regulations which formed the basis for the management of the two museums from 1999 to 2003.

Buildings
The activities of the Museum of Cultural History are currently localised in four main buildings in Oslo city centre (the Historical Museum at Frederiks gate 2, Frederiks gate 3, the laboratory sheds at Frederiks gate 3 and St. Olavs gate 29), and the Viking Ship Museum on the Bygdøy peninsula. The museum also has several external warehouses as well as rented facilities for the institution’s larger and longer-lasting projects. Since 2008 a substantial portion of the museum’s collections are stored in a large, modern warehouse at Økern in Oslo. The museum’s director and administrative staff are located at St. Olavsgate 29.