While we were in Oslo there was a cliff diving event happening at the Opera House. I couldn’t believe how crowded it was! We watched a couple of dives and moved on.
I thought this was a better shot of the Munch Museum than in our last post. Really an impressive building!
The second museum we visited in Oslo was the National Museum, which is filled with Norwegian art! Here they have the original “The Scream” painting by Munch, dating from 1893. We were fortunate to swing by this painting first, since by the time we circled the museum and came back to it, there was a huge crowd around it. To be honest, if you put this one and the one from the Munch Museum next to it, I don’t think I could tell one from the other, but at least there was plenty of space to view this one!
Our favorite painting in the museum was this one, “Winter Night in the Mountains” by Harald Sohlberg. Trust me, the photo with the overhead reflections just doesn’t do this painting justice.
They had an impressive collection of non-Norwegian artists as well, like this one from Claude Monet titled “Rain, Etretat” from 1886.
As well as one of Van Gogh’s self-portraits, from 1889.
This work is from Pablo Picasso, created during his blue period (1901-1904), titled “Poor Couple in a Cafe”. I guess the absence of food in front of them is self-explanatory?
They even had one of Rodin’s “The Thinker” sculptures! The website for the museum is a little vague, but I’m pretty sure this is a replica, although still very valuable as it was made under Rodin’s supervision.
As you can see from the roof of the museum, it was an incredibly beautiful day in Oslo!
Since this was our last day here we decided to visit Frogner Park, the most beautiful park in Oslo. This was on a Sunday and the park was packed with people!
The flowers were in full bloom!
The section of the park with the fountain and the monolith behind it is known as Vigeland Sculpture Park. This area was built by Norwegian sculptor Gustav Vigeland, who created 212 sculptures for the park, mostly installed between 1940 and 1949. The fountain was the earliest sculpture in the park, installed in 1924.
The most impressive sculpture is “The Monolith”, carved from a single block of granite. Standing at nearly 56 feet tall, it has 121 intertwined human figures. Vigeland’s interpretation is that this represents humanity’s aspiration and pursuit of the spiritual.
We just aspire to take a decent selfie!
The last section of Vigeland’s park is the “Wheel of Life”, with a man, a woman and two children holding onto each other for all eternity. I didn’t find it nearly as impressive as The Monolith.
We saw this sign on our way back to the hotel, in the window of a tattoo parlor. Really curious where this sign was originally!
Up next we head north, above the arctic circle, to visit Tromso, Norway.