Read Free Online Books at How To

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In numbers, the museums, exhibitions and festivals of the country are modest, in keeping with the relatively small population, but some of them are the most outstanding in the world.

The Viking Ship Museum in Oslo, with its displays of the legendary long ships and artifacts of the Viking Age, sets visitor records almost every year. The Ski Museum on the Holmenkollen hill above Oslo is the largest of its sort. The Bergen International Festival is part of the international circuit for classical musicians and music lovers, as the Molde Jazz Festival is for jazz musicians and fans. The five World Heritage Sites bear witness to the settlement of the Scandinavian Peninsula, from prehistoric times to the 20th century.

And the holdings of the museums are newsworthy, as the Munch Museum ruefully found in August 2004, when Edvard Munch the most famous of all Norwegian paintings, was stolen.

4National Gallery (Nasjonalgalleriet) of fine art with exhibits of international and Norwegian drawings, prints and paintings; Universitetsgt 13, PO Box 7014 St. You will find both listed under messe og kongressarrangement in the Yellow Pages.

World Heritage Sites

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) works to identify, protect and preserve sites of cultural and natural heritage around the world. To date, 788 sites have been inscribed on the World Heritage List. Five of them are in Norway:

1Bryggen, the old quay of Bergen that is a reminder of the city importance in the days of Hanseatic League trading from the 14th to the mid16th century. Several fires, the last in 1955, have destroyed many buildings, but 58 remain and are used principally for restaurants and artists studios.

2Pictographs at Alta, near the Arctic Circle, date to the first prehistoric settlement from ca 4200 to 500 BC.

3Ror the town built in the 17th century to mine copper. The mines closed down in 1977, but 80 of the original wooden houses remain, their pitchlog facades giving the town a medieval look.

4Urnes Stave Church, built in the 12th and 13th centuries in the Scandinavian wooden tradition that shows traces of Celtic art, Viking traditions and Romanesque building.

5Veg an archipelago of dozens of islands centred at Vega, just south of the Arctic Circle, that bears evidence of habitation since the Stone Age and of the ways in which fishermen and farmers existed for some 1500 years.