Norwegian Radio and Television Museum

On Tuesday, 2026-09-02, Trish and I took a bus trip organized by the local retired persons’ association, to the Norwegian Radio and Television Museum in Selbu, located 139 km almost directly south of us, and officially = according to Google maps, takes about 2h16m to drive there. I have wanted to visit the museum before, but on those several occasions it was never open. The rest of the trip was not worth the effort, and will not be mentioned. I don’t think I will take any more trips with the organization again. Altogether, we were away from home 12 hours!

The museum is owned by Anne Helene Steen née Kruse (1945 – ) and Jan Erik Steen (1946 – ). They bought a farm in Selbu in 2005 to provide them with sufficient space for a radio museum that opened in 2006. This was because Jan Erik’s collector mania ran out of space in their Trondheim house. The television museum opened in 2015. Originally, the farm buildings occupied about 900 m² of space. In 2025 they occupy about 3 000 m².

Arriving in the museum, on of the first things one encounters are artworks and photographs. The subject matter varies, from a photograph of the recently deceased king and his wife, with two small children, one of which is the current king, Haakon VIII (1973 – ). to unknown people.

The visit consisted of:

• Coffee and … on arrival
• Tour of the radio section of the museum
• Lunch with coffee
• Tour of the television section of the museum

The museum houses:

• A record collection with 24 000 records and 20 jukeboxes.
• Radio- and television equipment, including a tower of equipment.
• Radio equipment from World War II.
• The world’s largest radio, an enlarged Radionette Symphoni 3D radio occupying about 5m² of floor space. Build during the Covid pandemic of 2020, when the museum was not open to visitors.
• Object- and photo collection of the Accordion and Gammeldans (a form of traditional Norwegian folk dance) Hall of Fame. To understand what this is, here is a link to 1h30m of agonising music and dance from 2010, sent on Norwegian television.
• Norway’s largest collection of notes, books and recordings of Alf Prøysen (1914 – 1970), born Alf Olafsen: author, poet, playwright, songwriter and musician, often with children as his target audience.
• Business records for the Edda radio factory, Trondheim from 1939 to 1964. It managed to permanently delay radio equipment for German occupying forces during World War II, but managed to build emergency safety devices and repaired illegal radios for the Norwegian resistance. A transition to television killed off the company.
• Bicycle exhibition. Totally unrelated to television, but Steen was at one time a competition cyclist, with a need to collect things.
• Awards exhibit for cross-country skier Oddvar Brå (1951 – ).
• Amphitheatre for outdoor concerts.

In the summer of 2025 a 6m 84 cm high tower , 3m 18 cm in diameter, was constructed. It consists of about 700 radios and television receivers. Steen was inspired by a similar installation at the Tate Modern gallery in London. The Brasilian conceptual artist Cildo Meireles (1948 – ) built his own tower, Babel, in 2001. It has been confirmed that the radio tower in Selbu is higher than the one in London.

Steen tells the story of how he acquired two computer controlled modern playback machines, one with a piano and accordion, the second with stringed instruments, including at least one guitar and a banjo. These were ordered new, and made in the USA. He forgot to ask the price when he ordered them (and we were not told what it was). We did get to listen to the music from both machines for several minutes.

On several walls of the museum there are Vogue picture records, possibly the entire collection of 74 titles, released between 1946-05 and 1947-04 on 10-inch Vogue picture discs. They have illustrations embedded in the transparent vinyl on both sides of a 78 rpm record. Tom Saffady (1917 – 1954) produced them at Sav-Way Industries of Detroit, Michigan.

The illustrations on each side of the record are usually related to the title of the song on that side. The production process involved a central core aluminum disc was sandwiched between the paper illustrations and vinyl.

Kringkastingsselskapet A/S, a privately owned company and the predecessor of Norsk Rikskringkasting AS (NRK) = The Norwegian Broadcasting corporation, started regular radio broadcasts in Norway in 1925. NRK itself was founded in 1933. In 1954, NRK started broadcasting television shows, on a trial basis. Regular broadcasts started in 1960.

I found two works of art in the dining room, both of cars, including the one above, by Hariton Pushwagner (artistic name) = Terje Brofos (1940 – 2018), world famous in Norway for his pop art.

At the museum were four vehicles, in chronological order: A 1924 Buick, a 1933 Fordon tractor, a 1965 Ford Mustang, and a newish Hongqi E-HS9 SUV wagon, often compared to a Rolls-Royce Cullinan by the automotive press, since both cars were designed by Giles Taylor (1968 – ). The E-HS9 sells new in Norway for NOK 1.3 million or more. That means it is almost affordable, in comparison the Cullinan costs about three times more NOK 4 million before taxes, or US$ 400 000.

Steen is educated as a civil engineer. Despite having made a fortune with cement, often in the form of oil platforms, Steen is eager to receive support from the Norwegian government, for his museum. In 2023, Trøndelag county gave him NOK 500 000, which he used to register 303 of the 32 000 + objects in his museum collection. That means that the museum would need about NOK 50 million to register everything. After that initial payment, the county has not provided additional funding.

One of the characteristics I appreciated with the museum was the use of bright colours in the 1960s. I still am fascinated by bright colours.

For those interested, the museums’ erotic art collection is housed in the toilet facilities. I am told that artworks with naked males occupy the women’s facilities, while I have experienced that artwork of naked females are in the male’s facilities. Sorry, none of these works are reproduced in this post. To compensate, I have attached a photo from near the museum entrance, of Audrey Hepburn with bubblegum.

My impression is that this museum represents an epoch that has already passed away. I do not listen to a radio or watch television programs. I have a collection of music, films and documentaries on assorted hard drives, that I can access when needed. These include most of the cultural content I consumed in my youth, such as about 130 episodes from The Avengers. For current affairs, there is YouTube, although I wish Mastodon would attract a larger audience. I still miss Ello, my all-time favourite social media site, that closed 2023-06.

Note 1: In the 1950s, the McLellan household listened to New Westminster’s own radio station, CKNW. There are four things I remember from it. 1) Commercials for Woodward Stores $1.49 day, possibly the first Tuesday in the month when selected items were on sale for that price. 2) Commercials for Valley Lumber, where I bought essential items for the first boat I constructed, such as dimensioned lumber, plywood and screws. 3) Jack Webster (1918-1999) a Glasgow-born Canadian journalist, radio and television personality complaining about something, anything on a daily basis. 4) Hagen’s Scandinavia, a one hour long program of Scandinavian accordion music on Saturday mornings, complete with ads encouraging people to visit their ancestral homes in Norway and Sweden, using the Hagen travel agency. After I moved out of home, I never listened to CKNW again!

Note 2: This is the first weblog blog post being written on my newly acquired Mac Mini, a gift from my daughter, Shelagh. It is not a new machine, but 12 years old making it from 2026-12 = 2014. With this computer, I am also using a new to me Logitech MX keys mini keyboard (purchased used 2023-05-13) and a MX Anywhere 3 mouse (purchased new 2023-06-06), both in pink. I am using the same AOC Q27P2Q monitor (bought new 2020-10-08) as before, but it is equipped with a Logitech C270 HD Webcam (purchased new 2018-08-02, and never used until now), which provides 720 p and 30 frames/s. You may notice that not everything is bought for immediate use. Trish also has an AOC monitor, bought 2025-09-05, with the same model number, but hers uses only 1/3 the energy. I may yet change my mouse and keyboard to a Logitech K380 (described in the linked article as my favourite keyboard) and mouse to an M535. On my previous desktop computer, Eerie, I used a Logitech Ergo K860 keyboard, and a Logitech MX Vertical mouse. Unfortunately, the keyboard has been misbehaving, often refusing to write c/C and s/S.

Trish has already made the transition to a Mac, having purchased a yellow MacBook Neo on 2026-05-11. It has 8 GB RAM and has a 512 GB solid-state drive for storage. It is called Lemon. I have also ordered a MacBook Neo on 2026-08-30, with the same characteristics, but in pink. It has not arrived yet. It will be called Coral. The Mac Mini has been named Ray, after the reef mantra ray. All of my new computers will be named after reef creatures, until I decide to change to a different theme.