Blue room - Amundsen

Blue sitting room by Roald Amundsen's House on Sketchfab

This blue room is one of several rooms that Jørgen Stubberud rebuilt for Amundsen after the Fram expedition. You will find objects here from several expeditions and a lace table runner with a unique place in polar history.

The room was once smaller, but after returning from Antarctica in 1912, Stubberud got the job of extending it three metres to the east and changing the entrance area. Amundsen’s wallpaper is still on the walls and the original carpet still covers the floor. Behind the room’s contents lie stories about several key people in Amundsen’s life. The portraits of King Haakon, Queen Maud and Crown Prince Olav were given to him for the Fram expedition in 1910, and were also with him on the Maud and Norge expeditions (1918-1925 and 1926). The portrait of Amundsen on the wall is of unknown origin. A small photograph of Nicodemus, the dog that befriended Amundsen during the Gjøa expedition (1903-1906), hangs to the right of the entrance to the main living room.

Photograph from 1934. The royal pictures still hang above the Ross’s gulls today, but a portrait of Amundsen has been added to the wall on the left. Photo: Henriksen & Steen, National Library of Norway.

Photograph from 1935. Herman Gade hung on the wall then where Nicodemus hangs today. Photo: Neupert, Hermann Christian, Norsk Folkemuseum.

Photograph from 1935. Note that a different picture hangs on the wall today and that Cook’s lace tablecloth was not on the table in 1935. Photo: Neupert, Hermann Christian, Norsk Folkemuseum.

Above the sofa hangs a reproduction of John Charles Dollman’s 1913 painting “A very gallant gentleman”, depicting the British polar explorer Lawrence “Titus” Oates. Under the main motif is written “he walked willingly to his death in a blizzard, to try and save his comrades, beset by hardships”. Oates was part of the British expedition led by Robert Falcon Scott, who reached the South Pole in January 1912 only to discover that Amundsen and the Norwegians had been there before them. On the return journey, all perished. According to Scott’s diary, Oates died on March 16, 1912. To the others in the tent he had said, “I am just going outside and may be some time,” before going out into the storm, never to be seen again.