We didn’t set out to find a ghost ship in Oslo.  We just happened upon it; you could say it sort of materialised before us (although it didn’t  – it was there all the time).

Day 2 of our Norway trip was to be spent on the Bygdøy Peninsula where several of Oslo’s most popular museums are found.  The peninsula lies about 2½ miles to the west of the City Centre.  One of the best ways to get to it is via ferry from the Rådhusbrygge (the quay beside the town hall). The Rådhus itself is an impressive building.  Built in 1950, it is here that the Nobel Peace Prize is presented every year (the Nobel Peace Prize is the only one of the Nobel Prizes to be presented outside of Stockholm).

The quay sits immediately to the south of the Rådhus, from which is it separated by a broad plaza.  From the quay, the Bygdøy Peninsula can be seen just across the water.

As we waited for the ferry we wandered up the quay; this is where we came across the ghost ship.

The S/V Legend was built in 1915 in Scheveningen in the Netherlands and was designed as a fishing and trading vessel.  Within two years of her launch, in the middle of the First World War, she was reported missing in the English Channel.  That was the last anyone heard of her for eight years, but in 1925 she was discovered abandoned – in the Congo of all places.  Further, of all the people who could have found her, the man who did was a fisherman from Scheveningen!

The fisherman brought her home to the Netherlands.  There she had engines installed and resumed her job as a trading vessel.  During World War Two she was running arms for the Dutch resistance, but then, in 1944, she suddenly disappeared again.

Just like her first disappearance, the S/V Legend was lost for several years, but then she was discovered in Newfoundland in 1947.  There was no trace of the crew, nor any indication of what she had been doing for the past three years.  She was returned to the Netherlands for a second time and resumed life as a trading vessel.  In 1955 she was sold to Norway and eventually retired from service in 1995.  She has now been converted back to a sailing ship; her owners are hoping to return her to a life of adventure on the open seas.

Be careful if you sign up for that adventure though, and spare a thought for the two missing crews.  As for us, we decided not to risk it and took the regular ferry across to the Bygdøy Peninsula!

Date of Visit:  18 July 2014

Points in this post (copy and paste the co-ordinates into Google Earth):

• Rådhus:  N 59° 54.715 E 010° 44.015
• Rådhusbrygge:  N 59° 54.615 E 010° 43.885
• S/V Legend:  N 59° 54.593 E 010° 43.850
• Bygdøy Peninsula:  N 59° 54.200 E 010° 41.000