Oslo Wanderings

The last stop on Jessica’s work-tour of Europe was Oslo, Norway. It was far less busy for her than Stockholm, but just busy enough that we didn’t have time to do too much there. We also were spending some time prepping for our last hurrah–three weeks of mostly-hiking in the fjord-lands of Norway. (More on that in the next few posts.) That said, we saw a fair bit given we were in town less than a week with both work and travel prep to take care of…

First of all, let’s get the generic-level overview out of the way. Oslo isn’t Stockholm or Copenhagen. It isn’t Paris or Vienna or Prague. It’s just a city. It’s a nice one. There’s plenty to see and do, and parts of it are quite lively in the summer (I wouldn’t want to go in the winter!), but we weren’t exactly blown away. It was a bit more reminiscent of London (though less frenetic) with a wide range of architectural styles and a mix of calm and busy areas. Here’s a bit of what the variety of areas we saw in Oslo look like:

Elsewhere, more grande olde buildings reigned, like the palace (left below) and the parliament (right)…

While a bunch of the above seem to be fairly traditional European styles, one area (between the train station and the water) seemed to have been completely rebuilt recently, with tons of shiny new buildings, some more lovely than others…

One of my favorite things in this fancy new neighborhood was the playground. It’s super-compact (mostly vertical), but also looks super-fun.

Also in this area were three of the coolest new buildings in Oslo…

The most dramatic of these buildings is definitely the Operahouse. It sits right along the waterfront and not only looks sleek, but is also a bit of a playground itself, with people walking up it’s sloping roof to various levels and even using it as a hangout space and picnic spot.

The inside is also quite lovely…

And outside, a floating glass “iceberg” sculpture wanders about the waterfront, only loosely held in place by an underwater tether…

Nextdoor, the new central library was Jessica’s favorite.

While the exterior is interesting, the interior holds a ton more:

• There’s lots of fun book-y art…

• actually fun play spaces…

• and games to play.

• There are places to hone skills and make stuff…

• and sooooo many different places to sit and enjoy a book or a conversation…

(Note that the last one shows the area in the overhang you can see in the photo of the outside.)

Jessica had an interview in the library one day and came home raving about how I had to go see it. We went on Thursday, our last day before leaving on our hiking trip. It turns out the library is close on Thursdays! I realized we were going to have one more day in town after our hiking trip, so planned to go see it then…that is, until I realized that that day was also a Thursday. Lucky for me, we got back from our hiking trip on Wednesday evening with just enough time to spare before they closed, so, yay for cool libraries! And thanks for the tip, Jess!

The last of the three big buildings was perhaps the least attractive: the Munch Museum. It sits just behind the Operahouse and looms out over the water (with a cool reflection on the upper windows).

Inside the museum was much cooler. We didn’t really know what to expect, only being familiar with Munch’s famous “Scream,” but this new museum was very nicely laid out and presented, with both a huge collection of Munch’s work and a number of other interesting exhibits. Some highlights:

• Well, let’s start with the obvious: The Scream. Did you know Munch actually made four versions of this? One is privately owned, but the other three were housed here. To preserve them, they’re in a special little (very crowded) room, each behind a different panel. Every hour or so the exhibit rotates, displaying only one at a time to help preserve them. (Also, I heard that someday soon one of the three will be moving to the brand-spanking-new-just-opening-during-the-week-we-were-there National Gallery. Speaking of which, we had planned to go to there on our one day between finishing hiking and flying home, but…that didn’t happen. See forthcoming post.)

• The Scream is based on a view of a blood red sky that Munch had one day from a hill just up behind where the museum is. Interestingly, he used this image in several other paintings as well.

• We were impressed by the variety of styles Munch used.

• He had some great portraits, including this self-portrait,

• He even created a series of works based on his own creation myth. These are a few of the sketches for Alpha and Omega.

• One gallery showed off some massive canvases he used to prep for major works that are installed at the University. The second one is called “The Researchers” and focuses on kids’ innate sense of curiosity, a cool message for a school…

• And we also discovered that Munch made a ton of wood cuts. There was some fascinating stuff here about various techniques he used and how the same original could produce vastly different works.

• One part of the woodcut gallery gave people the chance to play with some of these techniques.

• One of the weirdest museum experiences I’ve ever had was labeled Satyricon and Munch. This was a very dark room with a bunch of Munch’s moodiest paintings. But, it also had a soundtrack. In fact, it was a long (I can’t recall, but I think they said 57 minutes?) piece composed by Satyricon, a Norwegian “black metal” band. Here’s just a quick clip to give you a sense of what it sounded like and looked like:

• Another part of the museum focused on objects from one of Munch’s homes. But, the best part about it was the little mice hidden in the various “rooms” in the exhibit.

• There was even a video of the mice…

• The museum also housed works by other artists as well, mostly in a collection donated by Rolf Sternersen, a major collector of Munch’s work, but also lots of other great modern art. There were a bunch of Picassos, some Klee, etc. I really liked this one by Astrid Hanni.

• The top floor of the museum was dedicated to an exhibit called “The Brain Maze.” It was all made of cardboard and paper and invited people to play games and to scribble on every available surface. It was a lot of fun and looked something like this:

So, yeah. We went into the Munch museum without a lot of expectations, but came out having both appreciated some great art, but also some really fascinating ways of presenting art.

Speaking of art and buildings of note, one of the coolest places we saw was the Oslo Rådhuset, or City Hall. The building was begun in the 1930s, but finished only after WWII, so while they couldn’t change the look of the outside to fit the times, they were able to spruce up the art both inside and out. And there’s so much art! The outside has tons of statues–mostly focusing on workers of Oslo–as well as pieces depicting Norse myths. Inside, every inch is gorgeous with paintings celebrating the people of Oslo and their history–especially in relation to WWII–and a bunch of amazing tiling, a fascinating ceiling, and even some cool chandeliers.

Nearby, we also took a nice stroll through the Akershus Fortress. It;s been in use in various ways since the middle ages, and you can see some of its development just strolling through. We also saw actors practicing for a play, which was briefly confusing, but mostly we just enjoyed the peaceful area and the beautiful grounds and buildings.

As you can see in several of the photos above, there were some nice pedestrian areas. Like in Sweden, it seems like summers are pretty lively, with lots of folks out and about. There were quite a number of opportunities for outdoor eating, and even the statues seemed to be enjoying the springy weather…

Speaking of eating, we had some pretty good meals in Oslo. One place we ended up at three times was called Oslo Street Food. It’s actually house in an old bath house building, but inside now are a bunch of mini food-truck-like stands selling everything from arepas to gyros to ramen. There are also three bars and even a small game collection folks can use. The most interesting part was that all the ordering is done on one app. So, you can order meals or items or drinks from multiple places all at once and then you simply get a text when each individual part of your order is ready to pick up. It was pretty fun, and a nice place to people watch too.

We visited the more upscale Mathallen (food hall) on the last night of our first swing through Oslo. We enjoyed tasting cheeses and ogling desserts there among other things.

Across the courtyard from Mathallen, we checked out a little game cafe with a pretty sad game collection…but we were lucky enough to happen to be there just as a weekly game gathering was getting started. I thrashed our new Norwegian friends in Azul before we moved on for the evening.

One of the oddest things in Norway was that alcohol was particularly expensive. I mean, all the food was expensive, but alcohol was extra special expensive. Beer and wine, which are pretty cheap in most of Europe were the most dramatic, with beer costing about $8 or $9 in some places. Lucky for me, I don’t like beer, so I just stuck to expensive cocktails.

While in Oslo, we visited yet another food hall (are we sensing a theme?), but this time with an old friend. One of Jessica’s writing buddies from her dissertation group in Oakland happened to have moved to Oslo about 15 years ago. It was really fun to catch up with Erika, hear about her life in Oslo a bit, and also experience yet another (somewhat funkier, but in a way better location) food hall, this one called Vippa.

And we even got a bonus food hall experience (at Salt). As the three of us walked back into town from Vippa, it started to rain and we ducked into this funky tent area for a quick drink…

And we met up with Erika a few days later to enjoy a picnic lunch in the park. Overall, very nice to see a friendly face and great to catch up with her.

Enough about food, right? Moving on…

While we were in Oslo, Jessica and I got transit passes, which were pretty useful. We took buses and streetcars all over the place. Mostly the streetcars ran on tracks on normal streets, but I appreciated that in some areas that were only for streetcars, they planted grass, making a nice little green oasis in the midst of the city.

We only took the underground (“tunnelbana”) one day, but the cars were surprisingly wide and spacious. While most underground trains hold 4 people across, these held five, and the seats were pretty spaced out. I also appreciated the retro decor in some of the T-bana stations.

Oddly, the one place we took the underground-based tunnelbana was out of the central city to take a hike. We took a lovely little meandering trek from Sognsvann Lake up to a viewpoint atop Vettakollen and then down the other side past a DNT (Norwegian Trekking Association)-run hut (much more on those in future posts) to Frognerseteren, a ski resort with a decent cafe and a view.

The biggest challenge is that we took a huge series of wrong turns and basically wandered up the side of the mountain on a variety of half-trails, occasionally non-trails, only really getting back on a real trail when we hit the top. It was just very easy to get lost while dodging rocks, roots, mud, and such. This hike should have served as a bit of a warning about Norwegian trails, but we didn’t assume it would be typical of what was to come over the next few weeks. Our mistake. (Again, more on this later…) But, overall, an enjoyable day exploring the great natural areas surrounding the urban core of Oslo.

We had a much quieter, simpler exploration up the river in Oslo. Passing a number of lovely bridges, a group of dancers, and the weirdest student housing building I’ve seen:

Some quick hits on oddities encountered in Oslo…

• Dog parking outside Mathallen.

• Sand bins all over the place. I guess it snows in the winter? Who knew.

• The coolest forklift ever.

• And the funniest incident. Picking up pizza one night, I walked in the front door, but accidentally chased a confused pigeon inside. It made several failed attempts to leave before a woman trying to coax it out the door with bread crumbs scared it further into the place, where it ended up in the kitchen. Oops.

• A bell removed from city hall because it was no longer in tune…but was still available for passersby to play with.

A super-cute statue of the Queen of Norway looking out over a little lake behind the palace.

• A monument to the Norwegian resistance during the Nazi occupation…that evidently locals don’t like b/c the main resistance leader later became a soviet spy…

• Public saunas. There were several.

• Throughout Scandinavia we saw a ton of advertising for the new season of The Boys. Not sure why. But in Oslo, it was over the top, with a life-sized statue of some of the main characters (“The Seven” for fans of the show). Weird.

• And, returning to food briefly…Scandinavian grocery stores also had inordinately large blocks of cheese. I missed my chance in Sweden for a shot of some of the options there that were probably twice this big…

Finally, I wanted to save one of the coolest spots in Oslo for last. Vigelandsparken. This is an enormous sculpture park created by Gustav Vigeland, with art focusing on family relationships. We spent quite a bit of time examining the full range of statues there. It was great. And popular. There were a ton of people there on a random weekday morning. Old folks, young folks, some kids from a camp, families. It was fun and beautiful and interesting. And good people watching. But, mostly I loved the way that Vigeland used slightly blocky, but still deeply expressive forms to show all the good, bad, lovely, and hideous ways people relate to one another. Here’s a bit of what the place looked like:

• First we encountered the fascinating front gate. It was cool, but didn’t really clue us into what we were heading into…

• Probably the most interesting section is the bridge. It is lined with dozens of sculptures showing little scenes of familial interaction. Lovers. Parents and children. Happiness. Sadness. And a whole range in between. My favorite was the last one in this slideshow (I know some parents that sometimes feel that way), but there were tons of fascinating ones…

• The fountain in the next section wasn’t operating, but it still held more fascinating views of the cycle of life…

• The final section is known as the monolith. It is surrounded by gates depicting people of one gender or another. I appreciated how much could be conveyed here with simple lines.

• The monolith itself is a giant pile of bodies. It is again surrounded by more individual statues presenting different groupings of people. And these, in turn, were climbed upon by a surprising number of real live children…

Seriously. It’s a fascinating spot and well worth the visit, particularly in good weather. I’d say the same for Oslo in general. It wasn’t my favorite city that we saw this past year, but it does have quite a bit to offer.

More on Norwegian travels to come, but my writing time is currently limited as Jess and I are on the road back across the country at the moment. Until next time…