Blindern is the main campus of the

University of Oslo The University of Oslo ( no, Universitetet i Oslo; la, Universitas Osloensis) is a public research university located in Oslo, Norway. It is the highest ranked and oldest university in Norway. It is consistently ranked among the top univers ...

, located in Nordre Aker in

Oslo Oslo ( , , or ; sma, Oslove) is the capital and most populous city of Norway. It constitutes both a county and a municipality. The municipality of Oslo had a population of in 2022, while the city's greater urban area had a population of ...

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and t ...

Campus

Most of the departments of the University of Oslo are located at Blindern; other, smaller campuses include

Sentrum Sentrum, meaning city-centre, is located on the southeast side of Oslo near the inner Oslofjord. The district is dominated by high rises like Postgirobygget and The Plaza. Oslo's Central Station is located on the eastern side of the borough. Se ...

(law), Gaustad (medicine), St. Hanshaugen (odontology) and Tøyen (botany, zoology, geology and paleontology). The central building is the new university library,

Georg Sverdrup Georg Sverdrup (born Jørgen Sverdrup; 25 April 1770 – 8 December 1850) was a Norwegian statesman, best known as one of the presidents of the Norwegian Constituent Assembly in Eidsvoll in 1814. He was a member of the Norwegian Parliament and ...

's house. Other buildings of note are Eilert Sundt's house, the social studies building; the

humanities Humanities are academic disciplines that study aspects of human society and culture. In the Renaissance, the term contrasted with divinity and referred to what is now called classics, the main area of secular study in universities at th ...

buildings, named after

Sophus Bugge Elseus Sophus Bugge (5 January 1833 – 8 July 1907) was a Norwegian philologist and linguist. His scholarly work was directed to the study of runic inscriptions and Norse philology. Bugge is best known for his theories and his work on the runic ...

Henrik Wergeland Henrik Arnold Thaulow Wergeland (17 June 1808 – 12 July 1845) was a Norwegian writer, most celebrated for his poetry but also a prolific playwright, polemicist, historian, and linguist. He is often described as a leading pioneer in the develo ...

Niels Treschow Niels Nicolas Treschow (5 September 1751 – 22 September 1833) was a Norwegian philosopher, educator and politician. Biography Treschow was born in Strømsø, now part of Drammen in Buskerud. He was the son of Peter Treschow (1718-1773 ...

and P. A. Munch; Frederikke, the welfare building; and

Niels Henrik Abel Niels Henrik Abel ( , ; 5 August 1802 – 6 April 1829) was a Norwegian mathematician who made pioneering contributions in a variety of fields. His most famous single result is the first complete proof demonstrating the impossibility of solvin ...

's house, for mathematical studies, the biology building, named after Kristine Bonnevie, the first female professor at Oslo University. Though the construction of a university campus at Blindern was decided on as early as 1921, the first buildings were not ready for use before 1931. Only in 1960 was Upper Blindern, the area most associate with the university today, finished. UiO today has approximately 32,000 students. Nedre Blindern gård

Etymology

The campus is named after the old farm Blindern from

Norse Norse is a demonym for Norsemen, a medieval North Germanic ethnolinguistic group ancestral to modern Scandinavians, defined as speakers of Old Norse from about the 9th to the 13th centuries. Norse may also refer to: Culture and religion * Nor ...

''Blindarvin''. The first element is probably the

genitive In grammar, the genitive case ( abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive can ...

of an old name of the brook, Blindernbekken (''Blind''), the last element is ''vin'' f '

meadow A meadow ( ) is an open habitat, or field, vegetated by grasses, herbs, and other non- woody plants. Trees or shrubs may sparsely populate meadows, as long as these areas maintain an open character. Meadows may be naturally occurring or artif ...

'. The word ''Blind'' is derived from the fact that parts of the brook were hidden to see since the brook had a deep course.

History

Blindern was ancient farmland. In the 18th and 19th century the owners were among the progressive farmers who employed modern methods of agriculture, sold refrigerated milk to the city. Halvor Blinderen (1733–1804) was a pioneering farm owner and was among the first farmer to grow

potatoes The potato is a starchy food, a tuber of the plant ''Solanum tuberosum'' and is a root vegetable native to the Americas. The plant is a perennial in the nightshade family Solanaceae. Wild potato species can be found from the southern United ...

in Norway. In the 1850s parts of the Blindern farm were made the vicarage of Vestre Aker parish. Among the parsons was poet and folklorist Jørgen Moe, who is buried at the churchyard (''Vestre Aker kirkegård'').''Jørgen Moe'' (Store norske leksikon)
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References

University of Oslo Neighbourhoods of Oslo University and college campuses in Norway {{Oslo-geo-stub