Istanbul Culture & Art : Museums

A chilling museum to open in Istanbul; Norwegian Magic Ice Museum, a museum which is entirely made of ice, will open at the Forum Istanbul shopping mall on April 23, Children's Day. With an investment of 3.5 million euros, the museum will offer visitors a chilling experience while learning about when the Vikings visited Istanbul in 880.

    Magic Ice Museum, which is one of the world’s first permanent ice museums to open in a country with a warm climate, will open in Forum Istanbul shopping mall on April 23, Children's Day.

Magic Ice Turkey Director General Oddruar Olsen said the museum would be a different experience for Turkish people and the idea to open such a museum came from Scandinavian countries. “We thought about how we could bring something different to Turkey and decided to bring cold climate and ice statues from Norway.”

Noting that there would be 34 ice statues as well as a Viking boat and a Viking house in the museum, Olsen said the theme would be changed once every six months, adding that ice is a material that is hard to protect and dissolves faster with visitors’ contact.

Olsen said the cost of the project was 3.5 million euros. “The entrance fee for the museum will be 20 Turkish liras for adults and 15 liras for children,” he added.

He said the museum would be inaugurated on April 23, which is Turkey’s National Sovereignty & Children's Day. “We wanted to give a present to Turkish people on April 23.” He also added that visitors would be provided with Eskimo clothes upon entering the museum.

Forum Istanbul General Manager Jaoa Xavier said the museum was fit for the concept of the shopping mall, adding they would be pleased to welcome such a museum.

He said it would open with a concert by Norwegian Alexander Rybak, the winner of the 2009 Eurovision Song Contest.

Magic Ice

“Magic Ice” will be one of the first permanent ice museums to take place in a warm climate country and will cover a 1,400 square meters area. Visitors will wear special Eskimo clothes and enter the museum through an ice tunnel. The museum will be minus 5 degrees Celsius both in winter and summer.

Some 70 tons of ice were brought from the River Torne in Sweden’s Jukkasjarvi region for the statues, while the walls and the tunnels of the museum were made with 100 tons of ice provided from Istanbul.

The concept of the museum was created by designers and sculptors of the Ice Hotel in Sweden. The world-renowned artists, who stayed in Istanbul for some 15 days, worked to create ice statues at minus 5 degrees.

In the first section of the museum, the visit to Istanbul of the Vikings in 880 will be explained to visitors. In the museum, where a statue of a Viking soldier can be found, visitors will be provided with information about the visit through writings on sheets of ice. The information states that the first Vikings, who came to Istanbul over the Black Sea, used the name “Miklagard,” which means “protected lands,” for the city and that a Runic writing, which belonged to a Viking soldier named “Halvdan,” has been found on the walls of the Hagia Sophia Museum. In the section, an eight-meter boat and house made of ice, as well as a map of the first Vikings’ travels can also be seen.

The two other sections of the museum will include information about Scandinavian nature and an Ice Vitamin Bar, where visitors will be offered fruit juice in ice glasses.

The project has been carried out by Norwegian Lotofen Trading Company, while infrastructure, heating and cooling systems of the museum were made by Turkish engineers.

Source:http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com

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