Stavanger Museum

About

Stavanger Museum is located in the city centre and has three departments; the cultural history section, the natural history section and the Norwegian Children's Museum. 

Cultural history department
The main theme of "From ancient landscape to oil town” is the history of Stavanger from its founding in 1125 until 1995, the year the exhibition first opened. Here you can learn about how the area was first populated thousands of years ago, and how Stavanger's modern history has been shaped by various natural resources taken from the sea that subsequently were used as the basis for the town's major industry. During the last two centuries, the main source of income for the people of Stavanger, was herring, followed by brisling and the canning industry, and finally the oil industry in the late 1960s. On display is also a selection of local church art produced in the sixteenth and seventeenth century by artists such as Peter Reimers, Gottfried Hendtzschel and Anders L. Smith. Stavanger has always been a town with strong international connections. The strongest links have naturally been with the other countries around the North Sea, but from the end of the seventeenth century, shipping and missionary work made Stavanger an international town with global contacts.Today, the museum’s ethnographic collection, with its display of artifacts from Asia, Oceania, America and Africa, bears witness of the many exotic journeys undertaken by the town’s inhabitants. All artifacts were donated to Stavanger Museum by seamen and missionaries. Where do babies come from? What is DNA? What was it like to be a midwife 150 years ago? The exhibition ”The Miracle of Life” opened in 2012, and was created in cooperation with the museum association Den kombinerede Indretning. Many of the objects displayed here are from Den kombinerede Indretning’s extensive collection of medical equipment and other health related objects from about 1850 until recent times. The exhibition’s main themes are pregnancy and birth, and it displays the entire course from fertilization through the post-natal period from a cultural history perspective. Here, you can learn about what happens in a woman’s body during pregnancy, ancient contraceptive methods, old taboos connected to pregnancy and birth, as well as the development of pre – and post-natal care in Norway and in other parts of the world. A computer game allows you to test your knowledge of the reproduction process, and if you have ever wondered how it feels to be inside the womb you can give it a try in our enlarged model!

Natural history department
Disfigured animals and smiling skeletons. Are you perhaps wondering what a museum actually is? Is it the same today as it was 100 years ago? In the basement of the Museum, you can find a selection of the Museum’s oldest and most remarkable items. Both splendid examples of Norwegian wildlife and some amazing animals from the big wide world out there. Huge whales, birds with rich plumage, and not least some rarities such as a chicken with four legs and a foot from a genuine mummy. Do you experience the Museum in the same way as visitors in the past? This exhibition was produced in connection with Stavanger Museum’s 125th anniversary in 2002 and shows zoological specimens which were collected in the Museum’s early days. Even though they show the mark of time, some of them are today irreplaceable. The zoological collections comprise items from the fauna of both Rogaland and Norway, but are also built up from collections of overseas animals. The collections increased rapidly from the Museum’s early beginning and after three years 581 specimens of stuffed mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians, 211 fishes and 500 insects had been collected.

Right from the start, Stavanger Museum had support from the town's population from all over Jæren. New gifts, especially birds, came streaming in. Many animals were also acquired through private individuals, gamekeepers and taxidermists both in Norway and abroad. Some were obtained from zoos, especially the Copenhagen Zoo. The city’s involvement with both seafaring and mission created an increasing interest in foreign cultures. Both sailors and missionaries brought ethnographic material and exotic (stuffed) animals to the museum. This was significant for the diversity of species in the museum’s collections. Many animals and birds were also obtained by swapping with museums and taxidermists, both in Norway and abroad.

The architecture of the museum and surrounding areas
The neighbourhood surrounding the hill of Våland in Stavanger is a residential area. It's also, however, the location of the most impressive civic architecture in Stavanger with four key institutions, such as the Stavanger Museum, the former Stavanger Gymnastics hall, the Rogaland theatre and the former Stavanger hospital. These important buildings were designed and constructed at the turn of the century, between 1883 – 1897, by the architect Hartvig Sverdrup Eckhoff. The buildings were all made in the classical style of the period, hence why the area became known as «Acropolis of Stavanger» among the local citizens. The various buildings are monumental and elegant, with temple-like pediments, pillars and decorative elements, and illustrate the ambitions and civic pride of Stavanger at the time. The leading landscape architect in Norway at the time, Poul Holst Poulson, made the surroundings into a tranquil and parklike area with extensive use of lawns and various trees. The small creek adds to the serene atmosphere.