Viking Ship Museum in Oslo: Closed Until 2027, and What to See Instead

The Viking Ship Museum in Oslo closed in the autumn of 2021 and stays closed until late 2027. It reopens under a new name, the Museum of the Viking Age, in a building three times the size of the old one, with more than 5,000 artefacts on display where the old halls showed about 350. The museum's planned opening is November 2027, with its own caveat attached: "this can still change."

The ships themselves have already moved. Between September 2025 and February 2026, the Oseberg, Gokstad and Tune ships were transferred into the new building next door, where they now stand behind climate control and sensors, monitored around the clock and closed to the public until opening day.

That leaves a gap of well over a year, and much of what search results serve up still describes a museum you cannot enter, or a ship transfer that finished months ago. Here is the status as of July 2026, checked against the museum's own pages: what happened, where the ships are, what you can see in Oslo right now, and where the Viking Age remains out in the open — on the fjord the ships were built for.

Why the Viking Ship Museum closed

The old building was damaging its own collection. Arnstein Arneberg won the architectural competition for it in 1914, and it opened in stages: the Oseberg wing in 1926, the Gokstad and Tune wings in 1932, the entrance hall with the Oseberg finds in 1954. It was designed for a few hundred objects and twentieth-century visitor numbers. By the time it closed, vibration, humidity swings and crowd pressure were wearing on wood that has survived since the ninth century. Jan Bill, curator of the ship collection, said it plainly in 2021: "We are not building a new museum just because we can, but because we have to."

So the doors shut in the autumn of 2021, and the building itself joined the construction site. The protected Arneberg building is being rehabilitated and rebuilt as the arrival building of a far larger complex.

Where are the Oseberg, Gokstad and Tune ships now?

Inside the new building on Bygdøy, all three, moved one at a time after roughly ten years of preparation.

The Oseberg ship went first, in September 2025. Excavated at Slagen in Vestfold in 1904, built around 820 and buried in 834 as the grave of a woman of the highest rank (possibly a queen, sent off with carved sledges, beds, a cart and textiles), it is the best-preserved Viking ship in the world: 21.5 metres that spent close to eleven centuries sealed under blue clay.

The Gokstad ship followed on 27 October 2025, and it was the move the conservators worried about. Norway's largest preserved Viking ship, about 23.5 metres and excavated at Sandar near Sandefjord in 1880, it weighs roughly a tonne more than the Oseberg ship and rests on fewer supports. Conservator David Hauer said beforehand that the team was prepared for damage along the way. Afterwards, museum director Aud V. Tønnessen could report another successful move.

The Tune ship, around 20 metres and built about 910, completed the set at the end of February 2026. It was excavated at Rolvsøy in Østfold in 1867.

The transfer is finished. Many guides still describe it as staged or ongoing; the museum confirmed on 30 April 2026 that all the ships and the fragile Oseberg sledges are safely in place in the new building.

When does the Museum of the Viking Age open?

The plan is November 2027. The museum attaches the same reservation everywhere the date appears: "We plan to reopen November 2027, but this can still change."

What opens then is a different scale of museum. The complex measures 13,100 square metres, 9,300 of them new construction designed by AART architects, with a cost frame of just over 4 billion NOK. The exhibition grows from about 350 objects to more than 5,000. The University of Oslo will run the building; the Museum of Cultural History handles exhibitions, research and everything visitors meet. At opening it becomes Norway's first cultural institution devoted to the Viking Age, which reads oddly for a country this attached to the period, but there it is.

Where to see Viking artefacts in Oslo right now

The Historical Museum in the city centre, run by the same institution, holds the VÍKINGR exhibition until December 2026. It shows some of the finest objects from the Norwegian Viking Age: the Langeid sword with its gold inlay, shield bosses, an oval brooch, a Thor's hammer amulet, and gold and silver brought home from distant shores. Several of the pieces are headed for the new museum in 2027, so this is a preview as much as a stopgap. Through the summer (30 June to 21 August 2026) there is a 30-minute guided tour in English at 12:00, included in the ticket, no booking required.

If you want ships rather than swords, The Viking Planet in the city centre does the digital version, VR longship included. It is a screen experience, and open about being one.

What is open on Bygdøy in 2026

The rest of the museum peninsula never closed. Bygdøy's other collections cover the later chapters of Oslo's maritime history, and three of them sit within a short walk of the closed Viking site.

Getting there: the Bygdøy ferry runs from Rådhusbrygge 3 behind City Hall to Dronningen every 20 minutes (in service since 14 March this year), and the crossing takes about ten minutes. Bus 30 stops at Folkemuseet. The ferry ride is the better arrival; Bygdøy is one of the stops covered in our guide to the Oslo islands.

The fjord the ships were built for

None of the three ships is from Oslo. Oseberg and Gokstad came out of burial mounds on the Vestfold side of the Oslofjord, Tune across the water in Østfold, and the concentration of monumental ship burials along this one fjord (Oseberg, Gokstad, Tune, the Borre mounds) is unmatched anywhere in the Viking world. This was the artery. Vestfold, on the western shore, was among the most powerful of the petty kingdoms before Norway's unification, and it produced the Yngling dynasty that eventually did the unifying. In 1066, Harald Hardrada assembled between 240 and 300 longships on this fjord and sailed them out toward England. Twenty-four came home.

The ships sit in a sealed hall until late 2027. The water they were built for starts ten minutes from City Hall and has no opening hours. We run private cruises out of Tjuvholmen and pass Bygdøy on most of them; the route follows the same sheltered lane the longships used. A three-hour private cruise takes up to seven guests and starts at 16,688 NOK for the whole boat, with dates and availability online. It covers the part of the story a museum hall cannot exhibit: the weather, the islands, the seaway itself.

Guests ask about the Viking ships on most trips. Until November 2027 the honest answer is that they are in a sealed hall on Bygdøy — and that the fjord they were built for is right under our hull.

If you are planning a trip around the reopening, leave slack in the itinerary. The museum says November 2027. The museum also says the date can still change.