4 MUST Museums

In the title of this entry, “4 MUST Museums,” the all-caps on “must” is not for emphasis. I’m not suggesting that they are must-see museums here in Stavanger. MUST, with the all caps, is the name of the institution.

MUST is an acronym for “Museet Stavanger.” Museet is Norwegian for museum. The wordmark on its website puts the “MU” and “ST” in different fonts.

Because the language and tourism gods smile on Stavanger, “museum” also starts with “mu.” This allows MUST to suggest on the English version of its website that MUST stands for “Museum Stavanger.” How lucky can one museum get?

Well, not one museum. MUST is a … Hmm. I just realized I don’t know the collective noun for museums. A knowledge of museums? An artifact of museums?

Whatever. MUST isn’t a single museum. It’s a collection of, I think, eight small, specialty museums.

The MUST museums are mostly scattered about Stavanger. The Oil Museum I visited yesterday isn’t one of them. It’s a separate museum. I said, “mostly scattered about Stavanger.” One is a Medieval monastery 17 kilometres away. I won’t be visiting that one.

Oh, before I forget, Stavanger has an archaeological museum that’s also a separate museum. I saw some reviews in a couple of places online saying that is well worth a visit. That is to say, it’s worth visiting when it’s open, which is not the case while I’m in Stavanger. The archaeological museum’s website says it’s closed for renovations until the fall of this year. Because, of course, it is. It’s now July.

I took in four of the MUST museums this morning. I might do one more this afternoon and skip the others.

MUST Museums: Stavanger Museum

The first of the MUST museums I visited was the Stavanger Museum. It, like all of the MUST museums I visited this morning, is small, but it’s the largest of them. However, it includes a children’s museum, which reduces the exhibit space that might be of interest to childless, neurotic, crotchety old men. Well, that was rather specific, wasn’t it? I’ll leave it to you to guess who I was talking about.

The top floor of the museum’s two floors is (or, at least, it was when I visited; it might be a temporary exhibit) dedicated to an exhibition titled “My Stavanger.” It starts with the premise that, over the centuries, Stavanger has been inhabited by ordinary people “just like you and me.”

The exhibits follow a chronological order from the 12th to the end of the 20th century. The earliest artifacts, appearing in a room spookily decorated, are a 12th-century skeleton found during an archaeological excavation at the Stavanger Cathedral in 1967 and a Medieval wood crucifix. The latter contains only the body of Christ, not the cross. I assume the cross became separated. People should learn to take care of and keep track of their things.

The most recent artifacts looked to me like they dated from maybe the 1950s to the 1970s. They seemed to be a random selection of old television sets, radios, bicycles, magazines and other knickknacks.

In between was an eclectic selection of artifacts from the respective period presented in each section, including furniture, textiles, sculptures, and more.

Each of the spaces had some panels with scant information. There were usually some details about the artifacts. There was also a panel of snippets of information about the relevant year. This included just a single paragraph each (in Norwegian and English) on that period’s health situation and life expectancy, family life and living conditions, trades, and religion and superstitions. The panel also gave the approximate population of Stavanger at the turn of the century for the century or centuries represented in that section.

As I said, the information was sparse, but in the museum’s defence, it provided QR codes throughout that I could have scanned for more information relevant to many of the information panels. I didn’t take advantage of that, so I don’t know what information is there.

Apart from the My Stavanger exhibition, there was a room with an exhibition titled “The Miracle of Life.” It is an exhibition about pregnancy, birth, and midwifery. The title of this exhibition, along with a brief description of its purpose, is printed on a large panel with giant illustrated sperm in the background.

Greeting me as I entered this room was a model of a stork suspended from the ceiling. The stork held in its beak a cloth cradling a model of a baby. Below the stork and baby was another model, this one of a nurse, I imagine a midwife, carrying an old-school leather bag in one hand. A baby doll’s head pokes out of one side of the bag.

The text with this display explained that many parents are uncomfortable telling their children where babies come from, so they make up these stories.

Wait! What? The storks-bringing-babies thing is a myth? Why didn’t anyone tell me that before? I’m a childless man. How was I to know?

The rest of the sections in the museum contain mostly taxidermy (or maybe stuffed toys) of various animals, mostly, but not entirely, local. Among the non-local animals is an elephant skeleton.

Birds are heavily represented in the museum. (The museum has a bird-ringing program because so few birds can afford rings if they want to propose to a prospective mate.) Butterflies also make a minor appearance at the Stavanger Museum.

MUST Museums: Breidablikk

The next of the MUST museums I visited was Breidablikk. It’s a beautiful mustard- and brown-coloured villa that was built in the late 19th century by Lars Berentsen, a merchant and shipbuilder. The villa is surrounded by attractively landscaped grounds of trees, lawns and flowers.

The last of Lars’ children, who died in 1965, set up a foundation to manage the villa and surrounding park. In 1989 the property was transferred to the Stavanger Museum and is now open to the public to walk through.

The furniture inside is of the original period. (Maybe the original furniture. I don’t know.) I assume Lars Berenstein was rich. But the furniture and decorations are tasteful, don’t appear luxurious, and are not at all ostentatious. I was kind of surprised about that. But not as surprised as I was at the next stop.

MUST Museums: Ledaal

Ledaal, another of the MUST museums, is right across the street from Breidablikk. In 1788 Gabriel Schanche Kielland inherited his father’s property, which included a house, barn, and baroque garden. Grabriel demolished the buildings and built a new summer residence and barn. Like Breidablikk, the gardens surrounding the buildings are beautiful.

Stavanger Museum took over the buildings in 1836 and opened them to the public in 1946. But they haven’t always served exclusively as a museum since then. In addition to being a museum, it has also been a royal residence and a venue for official municipal ceremonies.

Ledaal, like Breidablikk, is furnished with restored period furniture. What surprised me is that the furniture looked much plainer, even more like the furniture of commoners, than what is at Breidablikk. It certainly didn’t look like furniture fit for a king or other royal personage.

I asked the attendant if that was the sort of furniture that was in Ledaal when it served as a royal residence. She assured me it was.

MUST Museums: Stavanger Maritime Museum

The Stavanger Maritime Museum, the last of the MUST museums I visited this morning, is down by Stavanger’s harbour, as would make sense for a maritime museum. It’s in three old buildings that have been joined together.

Exhibits in the Maritime Museum discuss, not surprisingly, Stavanger’s maritime history and the lives of dock workers and sailors. The exhibits include lots of text. There are also lots of old photographs, maritime-related objects, and ship models.

And one display case contains some knickknacks that are related in some way to maritime life. For example, one item in the case is an ornamental fish made by a sailor circa 1940. I include a picture of it here for one regular reader in particular. But the rest of you are free to enjoy it too.

In another room, there is a display of some “wage boxes.” According to the accompanying text, maritime workers were handed their pay in boxes. Those boxes were quite small. In the accompanying picture below I intentionally placed my finger very close to one of the boxes so you could get a sense of its scale.

Again according to the signage, workers were paid in cash, usually in a combination of a fixed sum plus piecework pay. NOK 0.45 plus piecework was considered to be good wage for a skilled worker. Unfortunately, the sign didn’t say when that was. Maybe there was an overarching sign somewhere giving a timeline for the whole room. If so, I missed it.

Not knowing what vintage it’s talking about renders that pay information of little use. Be that as it may, at today’s exchange rate, NOK 0.45 is a little under 6 Canadian cents. For the benefit of Americans in the audience, that’s a little over 4 U.S. cents. Um. OK.

There are some rooms in the Maritime Museum made up to look like authentic interiors that one would find in the harbour area. There is an old shop, a harbour area apartment, and the office of a shipping company owner.

Most of the text in the museum is in both Norwegian and English, but not all of it. There’s one room where the room label is in both Norwegian and English, the English being “Sail Loft.” There are a few panels inside the sail loft with considerable text, all of it only in Norwegian. I didn’t bother asking Google Translate to translate it for me.

That was enough MUST Museums for the morning. It was time for lunch.