King Oscar II's Collection

This setabu is not one of the original buildings in the Collections. It was set up here to «replace» the open-hearth farmhouse from Kjelleberg moved to the museum’s Setesdal farmstead in 1913.

It is built just like a medieval open-hearth house. Such one-room houses with open galleries in front of the entrance were probably more common than those with three rooms. The single room has fixed sleeping benches on both sides and an open hearth in the middle of the floor. Buildings that had become old-fashioned were often moved and used at a mountain seter. This setabu was used as a summer house by people from Setesdal at a mountain pasture farm. One of the many inscriptions in the room reads «1600».

The portal was built as the entry to the section of the Norwegian Industrial and Art Fair held in the Royal Palace park. It was also used to advertize the huge wood-processing concern Saug­brugsforeningen that had it built.

It was designed by the architect Holm Hansen Munthe (1848-1898), the foremost representative of the so-called Viking revival style, or dragestil. He also designed building 243. A

fter the fair closed, the portal was presented to the King and set up as the entry gate for the Collections at Bygdøy. Taken out of use in the 1920s, it was in such disrepair by 1951 that it was dismantled. In connection with the museum’s centen­nary in 1994, the portal was restored and rebuilt at the same place as it once stood.