The thoughts and life of me

On a warm sunny Sunday late in August we decided to go visit one of the newer museums in town. It is located where the old canning museum was but has been revamped a lot and is now really great. I had not gone in since it opened so it was about time. Ickle Pickle and I brought my mother and took a wader around the museum. As my grandfather used to be an office manager at one of the canning factories and my mother worked there stacking tins in her early youth, it was extra nice to bring her along both for her memories and knowledge.

The museum is called IDDIS and here is a little information from their web pages: IDDIS is a colocation of The Norwegian Printing Museum and The Norwegian Canning Museum. At IDDIS you will find exhibitions about Stavanger’s important industry and the people who ‘put Stavanger on the map’. On the new building’s ground floor, you can visit exhibitions about the printing industry in Stavanger and the significance of written language and the art of printing for society. The Print Shop on the upper floor has the actual machines used in printing.

The upper floor was closed when we were there but we will be back. And it would be much more fun for Ickle Pickle to go there when she is a little older and can enjoy the printing. But the house next to the museum where they have one floor from a typical house of workers in the 60’s and one from the 20’s was open and really great to visit!

Iddis is the Stavanger term for labels, particularly tin cans. The Norwegian word for label, etikett, became in local dialect “iddikett”, which was later simplified to iddis.

The two museums The Norwegian Printing Museum and The Norwegian Canning Museum share a common industrial history, as it was precisely the need for colorful labels and packaging for the growing canning industry that laid the foundation for the strong graphic industry in Stavanger.

The Norwegian Canning Museum was established in 1982. The museum is housed in an authentic cannery which was in operation from 1916 until 1958. Before that the building was a storage facility for canner, John Braadland.

The Norwegian Printing Museum was founded in 1991. In 1993 it welcomed the public to its first exhibitions in an old cannery warehouse in Sandvigå in Stavanger. The building and its neighbourhood were later re-zoned for hotel construction. In 2013 the museum closed and the collection was put in storage, in anticipation of new premises.

One of the really great things about the new museum was that they have a café and brasserie that “everybody” has been giving great reviews and one of the things on our list for the day was to try out some lunch there. As the weather was really great we decided to sit outside, but we had to sit under the parasols because the sun was blaring down on the outdoor serving area. The food was really great and we all enjoyed it a lot. I had a crab focaccia sandwich, Ickle Pickle loves prawns so she had a prawn focaccia sandwich, and my mother had some assorted rye bread sandwiches. The kids menu offered all the same sandwiches as the adult versions only half the size, so that was perfect. It is always a shame (for those that don’t have picky eaters), when there are only hot dogs or chips and the likes for the little ones.

After we had been there we went across the way to one of the other lovely houses in the old town that had a café selling Pickles favorite treat, ice cream, so we had one of them too.

I hope the weekend a head will treat you all well. We have a few plans this weekend, but most of it is quite open. Just the way I like it.