The Norwegian Canning Museum had been described to us by my wife’s parents as the most boring museum in the world so we absolutely had to go and see for ourselves during our 2023 cruise to Norway on Britannia when we docked at Stavanger. It’s because we’re the sort of people who like to find things out for ourselves and not really trust other people’s experiences. We like reading about other people’s experiences, we like seeing the videos, we love seeing the photos, we like to hear about those experiences, but we’re not stupid enough to think that it will be just the same for us.
Purchasing our ticket for the canning museum also granted us access to other museums in Stavanger, one of which was in a modern building beside the more historical one we’d come to see. We decided to wander around the Printing Museum first.
As you might expect from a museum with this name, it housed equipment covering the history and importance of printing in and around the Stavanger area in Norway. Printing presses, book-binding, typesets, and various other bits and pieces were in abundance but there wasn’t a lot of explanation as to what anything really did or what it was for, and we were the only ones there so our visit was one of a casual wander, taking a few photos, oohing over some of the machinery because we like a nice bit of industrialisation, and wondering why this particular museum was part of the same complex that showcased the canning industry we’re really come to see. That would become clear afterwards, though.
We then made our way to the Canning Museum, a very different sort of building indeed. This was a place where actual canning of fish had taken place and you could see lots of machinery, smoking ovens, examples of the cans produced, etc.
Was this the most boring museum in the world, though, as we’d been told? Absolutely not, and the reason for that was simply that upon entering we’d been approached by a man sporting a badge that read “Piers” on it. He asked us and a few other people around if we’d like him to show us around and tell us about the exhibits and we said yes. Oddly, nobody else wanted to at first, so the pair of us got a personal tour showing off all the various things on display along with some demonstrations of some of the equipment in operation, and gradually other visitors drifted over and started tagging along with us as well.
Having a knowledgeable guide for this museum was fabulous and really helped to bring the place to life and we also learnt about the connection to the printing museum next door: the labels, of course! At its peak there were over fifty canneries operating in Stavanger preparing fish to send around the world but the last of them closed down in 2002.
The upstairs section of the canning museum featured rooms set out as they would have been during the height of the canning industry in Stavanger. If you’re a fan of old telephone equipment and pieces of furniture then you’ll love these glimpses into the past.
So, we’d have lied and told my wife’s parents that we’d found the canning museum interesting just for the hell of it if we hadn’t enjoyed our visit there, but thanks largely to Piers we genuinely did like the Norwegian Canning Museum. If you’re visiting Stavanger then you’re likely to take a look around Gamle Stavanger because everyone does, and if you’re there anyway then it’s a decent way to spend some time, maybe learn a few things, or even just pick up some sardines in the gift shop.
In the next post in this cruise travelogue series we’ll take a walk through Gamle Stavanger on the way to another museum included in the ticket price we’d just paid.