What happened
Grønlandsleiret runs east from the river through the quarter Oslo calls Grønland, and the block at number 15 was put up by a brewery. Oslo byleksikon credits Ytteborgs Bryggeri and the architect Herman Major Backer with building it in 1892; Vårt Oslo gives the same year to Schous bryggeri. What nobody records in 1892 is a drink sold. The rooms opened as a stage — Grønland Folketheater took them in 1894, under the name Olympen Christiania Morskabsteater, and Dagsavisen places a Kristiania Morskabsteater opening night here the year before that. Oslo byleksikon dates the eating house to 1899, and the restaurant called itself an Oslo restaurant of 1899 on its own front page until the week it shut. Norwegian Wikipedia opens instead by saying changing owners have kept the place going since 1892, then gives, four paragraphs later, Jørgen and Cathinka Jensen opening a restaurant in the ground-floor hall in 1904 and the name Olympen Café og Restaurasjon going up in 1912. The two cannot both be the start of the trade, and 1892 is the year of the walls. Lars Backer rebuilt the front in 1927 and put a terrace on the roof; Hans Henrik Sartz Backer painted nine views of Grønland and Enerhaugen in 1928. Under owner after owner the ground floor was chiefly a beer hall until 1963, when a refit reopened it as a dining room with the paintings left where they were. The protection is thinner than the newspapers imply. Vårt Oslo called this a protected building in 2022, but nothing read for this entry records a preservation order under Norway’s heritage act, and Oslo byleksikon notes only a blue plaque from the civic society Oslo Byes Vel, which commemorates rather than controls. Byantikvaren, the city antiquarian, keeps a yellow list of buildings of cultural value running from the legally protected to the merely noted; which of those the block is, we could not establish.
What is there now
Empty, and the building is for sale. Vårt Oslo reported on 1 October 2026 that the shares in Grønlandsleiret 15 AS, which owns 1,549 square metres over three floors, had been offered at 75 million kroner, the previous owner having died earlier in the year. Olympen’s own site still asks for somebody to take the rooms on — it says the house has unfortunately closed and is looking for new operators for the city’s cultural treasure — which is a wish and not a plan, and the company that was doing the asking is in bankruptcy. Nothing is recorded as having opened in the hall since. The nine Backer paintings were still on its walls at the last refit; no report since the closure says where they are now.
Location recorded from OpenStreetMap node 3664306363, Grønlandsleiret 15, found through Nominatim (https://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/search?q=Olympen+Gr%C3%B8nlandsleiret+Oslo).
Sources
- vartoslo.no
- vartoslo.no
- vartoslo.no
- data.brreg.no
- oslobyleksikon.no
- Wikipediano.wikipedia.org
- dagsavisen.no
- olympen.no, via the Internet Archiveweb.archive.org
- olympen.no, via the Internet Archiveweb.archive.org
- olympen.no
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