47 Fun Facts About Oslo

Israel struck the 1993 Oslo Accords, negotiated secretly in the city, with which organisation?

The PLO and Israel reached the deal through secret talks in Oslo that began in January 1993, yet the signing ceremony, attended by Rabin and Arafat, was held in Washington that September.

Which Viking king do the sagas credit with founding Oslo around 1050?

Harald Hardrada is the founder the sagas name, but digs later showed a town there by about 1000: Oslo marked its 900th birthday in 1950, then its 1,000th just fifty years later, in 2000.

What was Oslo called from 1624 until 1925?

After a devastating fire in 1624, King Christian IV rebuilt the town beneath Akershus Fortress and named it Christiania after himself; the spelling Kristiania was used from the late 1800s.

In which waterfront district did the Oslo Opera House open in 2008?

Bjørvika was working docks until the 2000s: the Opera House opened there in 2008, the E18 motorway was sunk into a tunnel under the bay in 2010, and the new Munch Museum followed in 2021.

Which foreign capital ruled Oslo for some four centuries, until a union with Sweden in 1814?

Copenhagen: the Nordic crowns were joined in 1397, barely a century after King Haakon V had made Oslo his seat, and power moved to the Danish court; Oslo became a national capital once again in 1814.

The polar ship Fram, now in an Oslo museum, carried which explorer south in the race for the South Pole?

Roald Amundsen borrowed Fram saying he would drift across the Arctic, and almost nobody knew he had turned south until he was at sea; he reached the Pole in December 1911, five weeks before Scott.

Oslo is the country's largest city; which west-coast port, once the capital itself, is second?

Bergen was the capital in the 13th century, until the king moved his seat east to Oslo in 1299; it remains the second-largest city, well ahead of Trondheim and Stavanger.

Oslo's seal shows St Hallvard with arrows and which heavy object, used to sink his body?

A millstone: legend says Hallvard was shot with arrows while sheltering a pregnant woman in his boat, and that his body floated to the surface even with the stone around its neck.

Which animal gives Oslo its nickname, usually traced to an 1870 poem by Bjørnson?

Tiger: the nickname Tigerstaden, 'Tiger City', is usually traced to an 1870 Bjørnson poem, and it began as an insult, with the tiger standing for a cold, dangerous and merciless capital.

Which crime writer's detective Harry Hole works the streets of Oslo?

Jo Nesbø was a stockbroker fronting the band Di Derre when he took six months off in Australia and came back with the first Harry Hole novel, which sends the Oslo detective to Sydney.

Which 1985 hit took a-ha, a trio with Oslo roots, to number one in the United States?

Take On Me flopped on its first release in 1984 and stalled again in Britain in early 1985; only a new video, mixing pencil animation with live film, turned it into an American number one that October.

Which river is traditionally seen as the line between Oslo's East End and West End?

Akerselva's waterfalls powered the mills that industrialised the city from the 1840s, but workers' districts grew up on both of its banks, so the neat east-west line is more a saying than a fact.

Whose surname became an English word for traitor after his 1940 radio coup in Oslo?

Vidkun Quisling named himself prime minister over Oslo radio on 9 April 1940, as German troops arrived; they pushed him aside within a week, by which time The Times was already printing 'quisling' to mean traitor.

Which Oslo-born woman won three straight Olympic figure skating golds, then became a Hollywood film star?

Sonja Henie came last of eight at her first Winter Olympics in 1924, aged just eleven, then won gold in 1928, 1932 and 1936 before Hollywood made her a star of skating films.

Which sculptor's works fill Frogner Park?

Gustav Vigeland struck a deal with the city in 1921: it built him a studio and home, and he gave it everything he made from then on, which is how Frogner Park came to hold more than 200 of his sculptures.

Which Oslo peninsula holds the Fram ship and the open-air folk museum?

Bygdøy is no longer what its Old Norse name says, 'the inhabited island': it is joined to the mainland now, and a large part of it is still a royal estate, home to the king's official summer residence.

Which painting did armed robbers carry out of an Oslo museum in broad daylight in 2004, to be recovered two years later?

The Scream has been stolen in Oslo twice: one version went from the National Gallery on the day the 1994 Winter Olympics opened, and another was taken at gunpoint from the Munch Museum in 2004.

Which two Thor Heyerdahl craft are displayed together in an Oslo museum?

Kon-Tiki and Ra II are the two that survived: the first Ra broke up and was abandoned short of the Caribbean in 1969, and Heyerdahl burned Tigris at Djibouti in 1978 in protest at the wars around him.

Oslo's Oseberg Viking ship was dug out of what in 1904?

A burial mound: the ship was no warrior's grave but that of two women, laid in it in 834 with sleighs, textiles, horses and dogs.

King Oscar II paid to move which medieval wooden building from Gol to Oslo?

A stave church: Gol's was taken down in the 1880s after the parish built a new one, and the king paid to re-erect it in Oslo, where most of its exterior was rebuilt on the model of Borgund's.

Which award is presented in Oslo every December?

The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded in Oslo on 10 December, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death, by a committee appointed by the Norwegian parliament, while the other Nobel prizes are presented in Stockholm.

In which Oslo building has Norway's best-known December prize ceremony been held since 1990?

The City Hall was begun in 1931, but the war stalled the work and it opened only in 1950; its twin brick towers face the harbour, and the ceremony has been held there since 1990.

What is the Storting, which has met in its own building on Oslo's Karl Johans gate since 1866?

The Storting is Norway's parliament, and unlike most it can never be dissolved early: there are no snap elections, so its 169 members always sit out the full four years.

Which firm designed the Oslo Opera House, opened in 2008?

Snøhetta won the 2000 design competition with a marble-clad building whose sloping roof doubles as a public plaza, so visitors can walk right up and over the opera house.

What is Sognsvann, last stop on an Oslo metro line and gateway to Nordmarka?

Sognsvann is a forest lake where a metro line ends, so Oslo locals can take the train to a summer swim or to the path that circles its shore.

Which playwright's words are set in steel into Oslo's pavements?

Henrik Ibsen walked each day from his flat in Arbins gate to the Grand Café, and quotations from his work now lie in steel letters in the pavements along that route.

Which Nobel-winning author grew up in Oslo and described it in Elleve år?

Sigrid Undset, best known for Kristin Lavransdatter, was born in Denmark and came to Oslo as a toddler; Elleve år (1934) retells her childhood there, and she won the 1928 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Who carried the 1952 Winter Olympic torch to Oslo?

Skiers: the flame was lit not at Olympia but in the hearth of skiing pioneer Sondre Norheim's home in Morgedal, and a relay of skiers carried it to the opening ceremony in Oslo.

Which venue hosts Oslo's annual Diamond League athletics meeting?

Bislett Stadium stages the Bislett Games each summer, yet for decades the same oval was iced every winter for speed skating, including the 1952 Winter Olympics; it was torn down and rebuilt in 2004-05.

In which sport is Oslo's Vålerenga the most successful club in Norwegian history?

Ice hockey: Vålerenga won its first national title in 1960 by dethroning local rivals Gamlebyen, and has since taken more than any other club; its home, Jordal Amfi, stands where the 1952 Olympic rink did.

What do people in Oslo call their metro system, which opened in 1966?

T-bane is short for tunnelbane, 'tunnel railway': Oslo's first stretch under the streets, from Majorstuen to Nationaltheatret, opened back in 1928, long before the full metro of 1966.

Which airport north of Oslo replaced the cramped Fornebu as the city's main airport in 1998?

Gardermoen grew out of an airfield the German occupiers built during the war; it opened as Oslo's main airport in October 1998, when Fornebu, full to bursting and with no room to expand, closed.

What opened in 2013 on Ekeberg, the wooded hill southeast of central Oslo, paid for by an art collector?

A sculpture park: Ekebergparken opened in 2013 with 31 works, Dalí and Renoir among them, and many depict women because collector Christian Ringnes planned the park as a tribute to them.

Which title did Oslo hold in 2019?

European Green Capital was the European Commission title Oslo held for 2019; the city keeps a climate budget that counts its carbon emissions as strictly as its money.

Which German warship's sinking delayed the occupation of Oslo in April 1940?

Blücher, a brand-new heavy cruiser on its first mission, was sunk by the guns and torpedoes of Oscarsborg fortress on 9 April 1940; the delay let the king and government escape Oslo.

What did some 200,000 people carry at Oslo's memorial rally after the July 2011 attacks?

Roses: so many people came, some 200,000 with red and white flowers in hand, that the planned march had to be called off, and the crowd simply filled the streets of the centre instead.

What is the centrepiece of Oslo's 17 May Constitution Day, passing the palace as the royal family waves?

A children's parade: it began on the writer Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson's initiative as a flag march for schoolboys only, and now school after school marches up Oslo's main street, past the palace balcony where the royal family waves.

Oslo's main street honours King Karl Johan, once a marshal under which ruler?

Napoleon Bonaparte made the French soldier Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte a marshal in 1804; chosen as Sweden's crown prince in 1810, he turned on his old master at Leipzig and later ruled Norway as Karl Johan.

What is the new town laid out beneath Akershus Fortress after Oslo's 1624 fire called today?

Kvadraturen means 'the quadrature': after the 1624 fire the king moved the town beside the fortress and had it laid out in strict right-angled blocks, and his grid plan in Kristiansand goes by the same name.

Which NRK teen drama, set at Oslo's Hartvig Nissen school, became a worldwide online hit from 2015?

Skam followed pupils at Hartvig Nissen school and unfolded in real time: clips, chats and the characters' Instagram posts appeared online at the very moment they happened in the story.

Which hill above Oslo has been home to a famous ski jump and its yearly competition since 1892?

Holmenkollen held its first competition in 1892, when jumpers ran out onto the ice of a small frozen lake at the foot of the slope; the jump has been rebuilt many times, most recently in steel for the 2011 world championships.

Which Canadian novelist gave the first manuscript to Oslo's Future Library, where it will stay unread until 2114?

Margaret Atwood's 'Scribbler Moon' came first; one writer a year adds a text, and in 2114 all of them will be printed on paper from a thousand spruces planted for the purpose in a forest just outside Oslo.

Oslo's Maaemo was Norway's first restaurant awarded what?

Three Michelin stars went to Maaemo, an all-organic restaurant whose name means Mother Earth; when it closed in 2019 to move across town it dropped out of the guide, then won all three back.

Which ruins on Oslo's Hovedøya island were quarried to strengthen the city's fortress?

A Cistercian abbey: monks from Kirkstead in England founded it in 1147, and it was burned in 1532 after its abbot backed a deposed king's bid to win back the throne; its stones then went into the fortress across the water.

Which event came to Oslo in 1996 and 2010 because Norway won the year before?

Eurovision Song Contest: by tradition the winner's country hosts the next one, and Norway's 1995 winner, Secret Garden's 'Nocturne', was almost wordless, a violin piece with only a few sung words; Alexander Rybak's 'Fairytale' won in 2009.

Which stadium hosts the national football team's home games and the Cup Final?

Ullevaal Stadion was opened in 1926 by Crown Prince Olav as the ground of the Oslo club Lyn; the men's Cup Final has been played there since 1948, and the football association later bought the club out.

Since 1947, Oslo has sent a giant Christmas tree to London as thanks for what?

British support in World War II, when the king and government ran the exile government from London, is the reason Oslo has sent a Norwegian spruce to Trafalgar Square every year since 1947.