Kon-Tiki Museum Kon-Tiki Museum The Kon-Tiki Museum () is a museum in the Bygdøy peninsula in Oslo, Norway. It houses vessels and maps from the Kon-Tiki expedition, as well as a library with about 8000 books. It was opened in a provisional building in 1949. In 1957, the current building—designed by architects F. S. Platou and Otto Torgersen—was opened. In 1978, an extension of the museum designed by Torgersen was opened. The museum was originally built to house the "Kon-Tiki", a raft of balsa wood of pre-Columbian model that Norwegian adventurer Thor Heyerdahl used to sail from Peru to Polynesia in 1947.
Thor Heyerdahl excavations at such prominent sites as Orongo and Poike. The expedition published two large volumes of scientific reports ("Reports of the Norwegian Archaeological Expedition to Easter Island and the East Pacific") and Heyerdahl later added a third ("The Art of Easter Island"). Heyerdahl's popular book on the subject, "Aku-Aku" was another international best-seller. In "Easter Island: The Mystery Solved" (Random House, 1989), Heyerdahl offered a more detailed theory of the island's history. Based on native testimony and archaeological research, he claimed the island was originally colonized by Hanau eepe ("Long Ears"), from South America, and that Polynesian Hanau momoko ("Short