The University of Oslo is Norway’s largest and oldest institution of higher education. It was founded in 1811 when Norway was still under Danish rule. Today the University of Oslo has approx. 27,700 students and 5,900 employees. Four Nobel Prize winners indicates the quality of the research at the University. The University Buildings When the University of Oslo opened its doors to students in 1813, all instruction was carried out in rented premises. Denmark’s King Frederick VI, the university founder, had donated the Tøyen estate – an area just east of Oslo at that time – as the site of the new campus. However, many were sceptical about locating the university at Tøyen on a permanent basis, arguing that it was too far from the city and accessible only via a road through hilly and marshy terrain. Later, in the 1820s and ‘30s, Kontraskjæret (a location just between Oslo’s city hall and the Akershus fortress) became the prime consideration for a campus site. However, these plans were never carried out because of problems with funding. Finally, Oslo’s main thoroughfare, Karl Johan (then Slotsveien), was chosen to accommodate the building of a new university. This is situated between Norway’s parliament, the Storting, and the Royal Palace. Although builders laid the cornerstone of the first building in 1841, the first lecture was not held at the new university until 1853. By 1856 construction work on three main buildings and an outbuilding was finally completed. Later, buildings would be named for the university’s pioneers. For now, the Latin names had to suffice: Domus Media, Domus Academica and Domus Bibliothecia. Of course the campus on Oslo’s main boulevard – Karl Johan – gradually became too small. Only fifty years after its foundation, university administrators were eager to install a new university library. Plans for expansion on the city campus were soon rejected, after initial costs for new neighbouring structures like The National Theatre and the Historical Museum grew to be sky-high. Instead, the new library building was built on the Observatory grounds at Solli plass east of the original campus, and in autumn 1913 they moved lock, stock and barrel over to the new building without closing the library a single day. At the same time, the Museums at Tøyen were built, finally making use of the Tøyen grounds. In 1925 the so-called "Blindern plan" started taking shape, which dictated a north-south axis for the university campus. Again, hard economic times made it difficult to get parliamentary approval for financing. Private benefactors like the Rockefeller Foundation, in fact, had to finance in whole or in part the construction of the first two buildings at Blindern (at the time, a satellite of Oslo): the Institute of Theoretical Astrophysics and the School of Pharmacy, both completed in 1931. Not long after came the Institute of Physics. However, the original plan for the Blindern campus was never realised. The upper areas of Blindern were not developed until the 1960s. The university now had such a long history behind it that administrators felt it was high time to honour some of its pioneers, and a number of buildings were named after notable persons from the university’s history. Over the years, several off-campus buildings have come under university administration, including the Viking Ship Museum, an Alpine Research Centre and the Barony Rosendal. In spite of the large buildings, lack of space remains a problem, and new buildings are being erected all the time. The latest additions are the Helga Eng, Domus Athletica and Georg Sverdrup buildings.
