The best museums in Oslo

The Munch Museum, known as MUNCH, is a 13-story building set directly on the Oslofjord waterfront and serves as the permanent home of Edvard Munch's major works, including The Scream. His output extends well beyond that single painting: drawings, paintings and prints spanning decades trace an artist who returned to the same themes of anxiety, love and mortality again and again, refining them across a lifetime of work. Standing in front of the originals, in a building designed specifically to house them, gives a different sense of scale and texture than any reproduction can.

Nearby, the National Museum of Norway opened in 2022 as the largest art museum in the Nordic region, also positioned on the waterfront near the cruise terminal. It houses Norwegian art, design and architecture spanning centuries, from medieval works to contemporary design. This museum is walkable from the terminal for guests who prefer to explore independently. The nearby Oslo Opera House offers a rooftop walk and a view across the fjord, a useful orientation point for anyone moving between the waterfront museums on their own.

Guests short on time but eager to see the city's cultural core often choose the Oslo Highlights & the Munch Museum excursion, which pairs a broader city introduction with dedicated time inside MUNCH. It is among the more efficient ways to take in the museums in Oslo without sacrificing a full day.

Bygdøy is Oslo's most museum-dense area, a peninsula across the fjord from the city center, reachable by ferry from the waterfront in summer or by motorcoach on a Princess excursion. Four major museums sit within walking distance of one another here, making it possible to move between very different kinds of history in a single afternoon.

Polar and maritime exploration — Fram, Kon-Tiki and the Maritime Museum

The Fram Museum houses the polar ship Fram, built in 1892, which carried explorers on several Arctic and Antarctic expeditions through the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Guests board the actual vessel, walking decks that have carried explorers farther north and farther south than any other wooden ship. Standing inside a hull that once sat locked in polar ice gives a different sense of the expedition than any photograph.

At the Kon-Tiki Museum, the raft on display is not a reproduction. This is the actual balsa vessel Thor Heyerdahl sailed from South America to Polynesia in 1947, and seeing its scale up close makes clear how small a craft it was to cross an entire ocean. The Maritime Museum, also on the peninsula, holds the 9th-century Viking boat recovered from the Gokstad findings alongside Norway's oldest surviving vessel, at 2,200 years old.

If you want some of the best of both worlds, see the Fram Museum and the Maritime Museum with one curated excursion: the Fram, Kon-Tiki & Maritime Museums excursion. The Maritime Museum, Vigeland Sculpture & Ski Jump visits the same museum, pairing it with Vigeland Sculpture Park and the Holmenkollen ski jump.

The Norwegian Folk Museum

The Norwegian Folk Museum brings together over 150 buildings from rural and urban Norway, each representing a different historical period and region. Walking through it feels less like touring a museum and more like moving through a village that happens to span centuries, from turf-roofed farmhouses to a wooden stave church. It is a museum without walls, in the sense that the experience is being inside Norwegian history rather than viewing it through glass. The Princess excursion includes a guided walking tour, and guests can pair the visit with two other sites on the Open-Air Museum, Vigeland Sculpture & Ski Jump excursion.

Oslo is transforming its Viking heritage into a landmark new museum. The Museum of the Viking Age is currently under development and will house the world's best-preserved Viking ships when it opens, expected in 2027. The new facility is set to become a major draw for future visits to the city, and guests planning a return trip may want to watch for its opening. In the meantime, guests curious about deeper context can read more on the Vikings history and excursions in Oslo blog.

For this cruise season, the Viking Planet fills the gap in an unusual way. Billed as the world's first digital Viking Age Museum, it brings guests face-to-face with life-sized Viking holograms and recreates daily life a thousand years ago through 3D projections, virtual reality and immersive displays covering Viking history, culture, battles, weapons and sagas.

The same Princess excursion also stops at the Norwegian Museum of Science and Technology, home to more than 100 interactive installations across more than 25 exhibitions on themes including technology, airplanes, cars and trains. It is well-suited to guests traveling with younger family members. Both stops are included on the Oslo's Fascinating Museums: Science, Technology and Viking History excursion.

For guests who want something completely different from Oslo's city museums, the Kistefos Museum & Hadeland Glassworks excursion heads outside the city into the countryside, combining Norway's glassmaking heritage with one of Europe's most important contemporary sculpture parks.

At Hadeland Glassworks, guests watch the country's long tradition of glassblowing in progress, with refreshments served in the gallery surroundings and time set aside to browse the handmade objects on offer. From there, the route continues to the Kistefos Museum and The Twist, a building that is also a bridge and a sculpture, spanning 60 meters across the Randselva river. It anchors one of Europe's most important contemporary art parks, and the approach along the river is very much part of the experience.

The drive back follows the shore of Lake Tyrifjord. This is the excursion that takes guests into the Norwegian countryside and brings them back with a completely different perspective on what a museum can be.

The city's museums are one of the things Oslo is known for, so it’s worth planning a visit while in port. Every Princess museum shore excursion in Oslo departs directly from the pier, with transport and timing handled, and each one covers a different museum cluster or experience type. Most run three to four hours, and the longest — Kistefos Museum & Hadeland Glassworks, at 5.5 hours — still leaves time in the city on a typical Oslo call of nine to 10 hours. Guests exploring independently can also reach Bygdøy by public ferry from the waterfront in summer, a short and pleasant crossing, though Princess excursions travel there by motorcoach.

For those planning their own route and looking for things to do in Oslo, the Oslo Pass covers admission to most museums and public transport and is available at the visitor center near the waterfront.

It is worth noting that some Oslo museums reduce their hours outside peak season, though Princess European itineraries run during summer, from May through September, when all museums are fully open. The waterfront cluster, home to the Munch Museum and National Museum, is within walking distance of the cruise terminal for guests with limited time. 

Oslo concentrates an unusual range of museum experiences within excursion reach: the Munch on the waterfront, the Fram waiting to be boarded on Bygdøy, the Folk Museum's village of centuries and The Twist spanning a Norwegian river. Few cruise ports concentrate this much within a single day ashore.

Picture standing on the deck of a ship that once sat frozen into polar ice, the museum hall quiet around you, and the same fjord waiting just outside that carried explorers home more than a century ago. Book European Cruise to add Oslo, and its museums, to your own itinerary, or explore cruises to Oslo directly.