Nordic Museology • 1, pp. 111–118 funding. Not all changes come from above, but museum and heritage policies are important for understanding this complex organism, the museum sector. On the other hand, these changes have only to a limited degree be discernible for the regular museum visitor, as most of the public arenas of the museums have been lef intact, and there has been very few museum shut downs. Tis article will far from cover all changes, but will present what I deem the most important ones, before discussing how museum education and museology have changed during these years. A wild and flowering museum field If you fnd my words in the opening paragraph overtly metaphorical, my excuse is that these In 1975 the number of museums that received state support in Norway were 179, in 1995, 700, in 2006, 188 and in 2016, 109. Tese fuctuating numbers will in this article be a frame within which to paint the Norwegian museum landscape and the events that have changed it during the last decades. As the numbers show, there have been large structural changes, and the features of the landscape from 1975 are hardly recognizable today. Te Norwegian heritage sector is fnancially dependent on state subsidies, and the fuctuations above are indications of to what degree governmental decisions infuence the museum sector. However, most museums are foundations or companies limited by shares, they are most ofen owned by non- proft private associations, whilst around ¾ of the operational costs come from government Abstract: Te Norwegian museum landscape has been refurbished during the last decades. Smaller and topographically scattered units have been merged into large museum conglomerates, small streams of funding have become regular rivers of governmental fnancial support, and the notion of the societal role has become the landmark for all museums to navigate by. Museological research and education has grown from being a wild fower to become a modest perennial in the museum feld. Tis article will from such a modest museological perspective outline some of the basic features of the changes museums and museology has gone through. Te particular perspective from which the author views the feld is the MA-programme in museology at the University of Oslo. Keywords: Norwegian museums, museology, heritage studies, Norway, museum history. Brita Brenna Museums and museologies in Norway