We've run some pieces here in the past on odd or quirky museums in different countries, and today it's Norway's turn—and it's ready for prime time, with such contenders as a leprosy museum and the world's largest collection of miniature bottles.
The Leprosy Museum is in Bergen, which once had the largest concentration of leprosy patients in Europe. The museum, opened in 1970, honors Norway's Gerhard Hansen, the doctor who discovered the bacteria that causes the disease. Today, it's called Hansen's disease in his honor.
Oslo's Mini Bottle Gallery is the project of beer baron Christian Ringnes, who began collecting at age 7 when his father began bringing them home from trips abroad. There are now 53,000 of them, with 12,500 on display, ranging from a circus carousel to Elvis-in-costume to doll's houses.
If you find the bottles aren't to your taste, here's a museum that's to almost no one's taste outside of Norway: The Lutefisk Museum in Drobak, where all the exhibits celebrate the national dish of dried cod treated with lye. It's so Norwegian that you need to find a Norwegian friend to go along to translate the labels.
A prison museum might not seem unique, but this one in Kongsvinger is in a former prison that housed inmates from 1700 to 1830; it's run by a retired warden of the Kongsvinger jail. It includes artifacts of incarceration, and also a collection of artwork and crafts created over the years by inmates.
And, for those with a taste for something way off the daily curve, there's the Museum of Insemination at Stange. The public is welcome, but the real audience for the exhibits is cattle farmers and breeders who are interested in the documentation of artificial insemination in Norway, and the techniques and tools of the trade. On premises is a working insemination center. Over 1.3 million doses of semen from Norwegian Red Bulls is distributed worldwide.
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