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Less than a mile walk from the Norwegian Folk Museum is the building
that houses the Fram. The Fram is the ship that the Norwegian explorers Amundsen and Nansen used to explore the Arctic and Antarctic. Although the ship is fairly large, it got stuck in the ice while the Arctic was being explored. The Fram drifted in the Arctic ice for three years. |
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It was fun to visit the Fram because you
could go on the ship and look all around. I went below the deck and saw the cabins where Amundsen and the others lived while they were on their expeditions. |
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On the right, I'm waving from the ship's
wheel. |
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Across the street from the Fram is the Kon-Tiki Museum. In the
museum are explorer Thor Heyerdahl's boats the Kon-Tiki and the
Ra II. He built these ships, and sailed on them, to prove that ancient
peoples could have sailed great distances to settle areas far from their homes. Although the boats were sea-worthy, they didn't look too comfortable to me. |
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The balsa wood Kon-Tiki raft
was built in 1947 as a copy of a prehistoric South American vessel. A crew of six sailed on it across the Pacific from Peru to Polynesia in 101 days. This voyage of over 4,000 miles proved that islands in Polynesia were within sailing range of prehistoric South American ships. Thor Heyerdahl's book Kon-Tiki describes this expedition. |
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The papyrus boat Ra II was
built in 1970 by Aymara Indians from Bolivia, who mastered the art of building reed boats. It is a copy of ancient Egyptian vessel. This boat sailed from Africa to Barbados, about 4,000 miles in just 57 days. This voyage showed that ancient civilizations could have travelled from Africa to the Americas. (Incidentally, the
Ra II replaced the Ra I, which
sunk on its voyage.) |