Hun ville heller begå et nytt mord for å "se seg brakt av Verden".
She would rather commit another murder and be put to death [than remain here].
Birthe Jonsdatter, 1736
You are standing near one of Norway’s oldest continuously used care institutions.
For more than 700 years, this site in Gamlebyen has been a place of shelter, illness,
confinement, reform and care. From Franciscan friars to modern psychiatry,
the function has changed, but the purpose has not.
The Grey Friars
A Franciscan monastery was founded here around 1290 at the foot of Ekeberg,
beside the Alna river. The Bishop of Oslo ordered it torn down,
but the friars appealed to Rome. The Pope instructed the King of Norway
to protect the monastery, and it survived.
After the Reformation in 1538, King Christian III confiscated the monastery
and transferred it to the city as a hospital in the original sense of the word.
A place for the poor, sick and injured.
Stiftelsen Oslo Hospital has existed here ever since.
Birthe and the Dollhus
In 1736, a maid named Birthe Jonsdatter was sentenced to death
for killing her master’s child. The theological faculty in Copenhagen
declared her insane and unfit for execution. Instead, she was committed
to Oslo Hospital. This made Birthe Norway’s first recorded psychiatric patient.
She protested loudly, stating she would rather die than remain confined.
The king ignored her pleas and ordered that hospitals across the realm
must reserve space for the mentally ill.
By 1779, Oslo Hospital built a dedicated Dollhus,
from Low German dol (mad).
It consisted of 16 small cells, each about six square metres.
It was the first building in Norway constructed specifically
for psychiatric confinement.
The Birth of Norwegian Psychiatry
In 1845, physician Herman Wedel Major arrived at Oslo Hospital.
He rejected the idea that mental illness was a moral failing.
Instead, he treated it as disease of the body and brain.
His methods were primitive by modern standards: baths, bloodletting, strict diets. But his principles were radical: No punishment. Minimal coercion. Work and dignity as treatment.
Wedel Major drafted Norway’s first Mental Health Act,
adopted almost word for word in 1848.
His work led directly to the establishment of Gaustad Asylum in 1855
and shaped psychiatric care in Norway for more than a century.
Seven Centuries, One Church
Beside the hospital stands Gamlebyen Church.
A church has occupied this site since the 1290s.
The current building dates from 1796,
rebuilt after a major fire on the foundations
of the medieval monastery church.
It remains one of the few privately owned parish churches in Norway
and has also served as a night shelter for the vulnerable,
continuing the site’s original mission.
The End of an Era
In 2018, the last psychiatric patients left Oslo Hospital,
ending more than 700 years of continuous hospital operation on this site.
The hospital archive was entered into Norges Dokumentarv,
part of UNESCO’s Memory of the World programme.
Today the buildings house psychologists and related services.
The function has changed, but care has not disappeared.
The cache
The container is small and simple. The area around you is not.
If you enjoyed this history, look around and mention one thing in your log that you can see here that the Franciscan monks would also have seen.
Sources and further reading (in Norwegian)