50 free Oslo trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Oslo has been called Ánslo, Christiania and Kristiania, burned down fourteen times, and grown from a fjord-side trading post into the electric-car capital of the world. This Oslo trivia quiz covers the city's whole story: Harald Hardrada's founding, the 1624 fire that moved the town, the 1925 name change, the wartime sinking of the Blücher, and the modern waterfront of opera houses and museums. You will also visit the places every traveller knows (Frogner Park's Vigeland sculptures, the Munch Museum, Bygdøy's Viking ships and Kon-Tiki, Holmenkollen, the City Hall where the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded) plus the geography, climate, transport and sport that make the city tick. Questions run from easy to expert, and every answer is verified and cited to its reference page. If you enjoy this quiz, try our other Scandinavian and world-cities quizzes.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Oslo is the capital of which country?
Norway
It is both a county and a municipality, the only city in the country where the two administrative levels are integrated.
Q 02Which Viking king established Oslo as a trading place in 1048?
Harald Hardrada
The sagas date the founding to around 1049, but Christian burials from before AD 1000 let the city celebrate its millennium in 2000.
Q 03What was Oslo called from 1624 until 1925?
Christiania
After a three-day fire, King Christian IV rebuilt the city closer to Akershus Fortress and named it after himself.
Q 04In what year did the city officially take back the name Oslo?
1925
After full independence in 1905, Norwegians felt a capital named for a Danish king was inappropriate.
Q 05Which king first resided permanently in Oslo, making it the capital around 1300?
Haakon V
He also began building Akershus Fortress; Oslo's status faded again under the personal union with Denmark from 1380.
Q 06By what factor did the Aker municipality outsize Oslo when they merged in 1948?
27 times larger
Aker was a mostly affluent green suburb and the merger was unpopular there; it created the modern, much larger city.
Q 07What is the population of Oslo municipality (2025)?
About 724,000
The wider urban area holds around 1.1 million and the metropolitan region about 1.5 million.
Q 08Which patron saint, shown with a millstone and arrows, appears on Oslo's city seal?
St. Hallvard
Oslo is one of the few Norwegian cities, with Bergen and Tønsberg, that uses a seal instead of a formal coat of arms.
Q 09What animal features in Oslo's nickname 'Tigerstaden'?
Tiger
The 'Tiger City' tag probably comes from an 1870 poem by Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson; locals rarely use it.
Q 10What did people once wrongly believe the name Oslo meant?
The mouth of the Lo river
No river Lo ever existed; linguists now read Óslo as 'meadow at the foot of a hill' or 'meadow consecrated to the gods'.
Q 11On which fjord does Oslo sit?
Oslofjord
The city occupies an arc of land at the fjord's northern end and sprawls in three corridors shaped like an upside-down Y.
Q 12How many lakes lie within Oslo's city limits?
343
The largest, Maridalsvannet, supplies much of the city's drinking water; there are also 40 islands.
Q 13Which river historically divided Oslo into an East End and a West End?
Akerselva
Its waterfalls powered some of Norway's first modern industry in the 1840s.
Q 14What is Oslo's highest point?
Q 21How many Viking ships does the Viking Ship Museum feature?
Three
They were found at Oseberg, Gokstad and Tune; the museum is being rebuilt as the Museum of the Viking Age.
Q 22How many old buildings stand in the open-air Folkemuseet on Bygdøy?
155
They come from all over Norway and include a stave church.
Q 23Which award is presented in Oslo every December?
Nobel Peace Prize
The ceremony takes place in the City Hall on 10 December, while the other Nobels are handed out in Stockholm.
Q 24In which Oslo building is the annual 10 December peace award ceremony held?
Kirkeberget, 629 m
Two-thirds of the municipality's unusually large area is protected forest, hills and lakes.
Q 15Roughly how many hours of daylight does Oslo get at midsummer?
More than 18
It never gets completely dark, only nautical twilight; midwinter days shrink to about six hours.
Q 16What is Oslo's all-time record high temperature?
35 °C
It was set in July 1901, also the warmest month on record; 2018 was the sunniest year with 2,133 hours of sun.
Q 17Which sculptor's works fill Frogner Park?
Gustav Vigeland
The free Vigeland Museum area contains over 212 sculptures, including the obelisk and the Wheel of Life.
Q 18Which Oslo peninsula is nicknamed the Museum Peninsula?
Bygdøy
It hosts the Fram Museum, the Viking Ship Museum and the Kon-Tiki Museum, and is one of Norway's priciest districts.
Q 19Which famous painting is held by Oslo's Munch Museum?
The Scream
Edvard Munch donated all his work to the city after his death.
Q 20Which two Thor Heyerdahl craft are displayed together in an Oslo museum?
Kon-Tiki and Ra II
Both were Thor Heyerdahl's expedition craft; the Fram Museum next door holds Nansen and Amundsen's polar ship.
The City Hall
The building went up between 1931 and 1950 in the former slum area of Vika.
Q 25Who opened the Nobel Peace Center in June 2005?
King Harald V
The opening was part of celebrations marking Norway's centenary as an independent country.
Q 26Which firm designed the Oslo Opera House, opened in 2008?
Snøhetta
It cost 500 million euros and was the first opera house in the world to let people walk on its roof.
Q 27What was the Oslo Opera House the first in the world to allow?
Walking on its roof
The foyer and roof are used for concerts alongside its three stages and 2,000-plus seats.
Q 28How many Ibsen quotations are set into Oslo's central pavements?
69
The Ibsen Quotes project, finished in 2008, uses stainless steel lettering in the granite sidewalks.
Q 29Which Nobel-winning author grew up in Oslo and described it in Elleve år?
Sigrid Undset
The 1934 autobiographical novel was translated as The Longest Years.
Q 30Which Winter Olympics did Oslo host?
1952
Holmenkollen remains the country's main Nordic skiing venue; the city withdrew a bid for the 2022 Games in 2014.