At the end of March me and my beautiful and talented wife visited Oslo, Norway. We have traveled to the region in the past going to Bergen in Norway, and to Stockholm in Sweden and Roskilde and Copenhagen in Denmark. We like this part of the world and it’s history and culture. The picture above is of the Oslo Opera House which is a beautiful building right on the fjord. You can walk up and down the ramp like roof of the Opera House and take in great views of the city and the fjord.
Our walks around the city took us to Akershus Fortress which overlooks the fjord as well…
Due to jet lag I was often up quite early in the morning so I would slip out for walks around the city. It is a very walkable city by the way…
One of the most striking buildings that I came across was the Oslo City Hall. At first I thought it was some kind of crazy church since it’s architecture doesn’t look anything like a city hall to me. Huge bell tower, statues, carvings, elaborate clocks… it is quite a building. Then you go inside and all of the spaces each have their own story and set of murals and specific design. Many of the rooms have huge windows that view the fjord just outside the building. One of the most open and engaging city halls that I’ve ever seen.
Of course there was museum going… but there were disappointments… some of the best museums were closed because they were being consolidated into the new national museum that wouldn’t open until June. We visited the History Museum which had some great exhibits about spinning and weaving as well as about the Vikings and the Sami people…
We went for a cruise around the fjord. It isn’t the most dramatic fjord we’ve ever seen but it was a great way to see the area from the water. There are some very picturesque island towns as well as lighthouses and dramatic headlands in the distance.
One of the most famous attractions in Oslo is The Vigeland Park which is a huge sculpture park all by the same artist Gustav Vigeland who also designed the park. It is an incredible tribute to humanity, in every form, emotion and condition. Every sculpture is it’s own compact story and there are hundreds of them. Some tiny and some monumental and everything in between. The gates and lights and other furnishings in the park are all part of the presentation.
We went on an alternative culture and food walking tour around the hipster area which is called Grünerløkka. It was fun, probably the highlight for me was the waffle with “brown cheese” ( not cheese at all, more of a byproduct of cheese making ) and honey, jam and cream and the local hotdog ( hotdogs and frozen pizza are the two staple foods of Norway ) served in a potato pancake. It was nice to see some areas of the city that weren’t so sparkly, clean and modern.
A very famous resident of Oslo was Edvard Munch best know for his ubiquitous painting The Scream. We visited the new Munch museum, a beautiful building right on the fjord next to the Opera House. I have to say, having seen a comprehensive overview of his work and his life, I’m not a big Munch fan. I do like some of his monumental paintings and some of his portraits, self portraits, and etchings. But, overall I didn’t connect with him very much.
The Norwegian Museum of Cultural History is an outdoor living history museum ( in the summer .) We were able to wander around and look at the buildings from different periods of Norway’s history and from various areas of the country. It was a nice collection, it’d be fun to visit in the summer when it would be more like Old Sturbridge Village in Massachusetts with interpreters working and explaining what life was like in the various periods represented.
We took a day trip flying up to Trondheim which is the ancient capital of Norway and a university town. They have a beautiful 14th century Cathedral and an excellent museum of archaeology focusing on the viking period.
Back in Oslo, the National Museum of Architecture and Design is a small museum but it had an interesting show covering the interaction of designers in Norway and Scandinavia with designers in the United States. What was known as “Scandinavian Design” was somewhat a transatlantic conversation…
We also saw some Jazz at the club in our hotel, it was a mixed performance billed as “The Music of Ella Fitzgerald.” If you come with that title you need an amazing vocalist. The woman who performed sounded like she’d blown out her voice screaming at a football match. On the other hand, the band leader who played the clarinet was very good. And I’m a huge clarinet fan. He also had the good sense to intersperse her singing with long band solos… I think they knew what was what.
The bar at our hotel was probably the only “fancy” cocktail bar in Oslo and so when we went down for a drink we were always among the young and powerful people dressed to the nines and very much wanting to be “seen". To the credit of the staff they treated us old Americans very well and made great cocktails and even when I threw out requests like a Bijou they did well. I did get asked “Do you always come to a bar and order a drink such as the Bijou?” To which I answered “Yes”
The next major city in that direction that we need to visit sometime is Helsinki, Finland and I’d like to try to do a short trip up to Oulu in the north, maybe during the winter to get the full effect. I missed my chance when I worked for Nokia.