Petersontravels

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.

Our flights from SFO to Oslo were pretty much uneventful, but when we arrived in Oslo our luggage was still in Frankfurt.  A quick word of advice, if your layover in Frankfurt (or anywhere for that matter) is just an hour, your luggage isn’t going to make it.  Hell, after dealing with customs and a bus ride to another terminal, we barely made it!

It’s interesting to note that while we waited in line for customs, the couple behind us, who were on the same flight from SFO, were headed to Vienna to see Taylor Swift.  Unfortunately for them we found out the Taylor Swift concerts in Vienna were canceled due to a terrorist threat.  I can’t imagine flying all that way for any concert, much less Taylor Swift, but to go all that way and have the concert canceled has gotta be heartbreaking!

While our flight from SFO was a red-eye, we did wake up before landing and saw some beautiful skies over England.

If you fly into Oslo, the VY train from the airport to the city center is super fast and easy to use.  I highly recommend it!  Just beware, if you are from the US your credit card won’t work with their ticket system, and you’ll need to buy your ticket online using PayPal.

Just outside the Oslo Central train station is this tiger statue.  Oslo’s nickname is The Tiger City, based on a Norwegian poem dating from 1870.

Nearby is Knus Nazimen, which looks like Thor’s Hammer.  This statue is a monument to the Osvald Group, the Norwegian resistance group during WWII.  The hammer is breaking a nazi symbol, and the statue lists the names of the resistance fighters.

On our first full day in Oslo we walked over to the waterfront to see the Opera House.  If you look closely you can see they are setting up a cliff diving competition that will take place in a couple of days.

Here is a better look of the cliff diving setup.  You couldn’t pay me to jump off that thing!

This is the view from the top of the Opera House.  This seagull was obviously enjoying posing for everybody.

This glass and stainless steel sculpture in the harbor is called “She Lies”, and no, it has nothing to do with Kamala Harris.  This is supposed to represent an iceberg.  We’ll have to come back and check it out and night at some point.

We then walked west through the central part of Oslo, and visited the Oslo Cathedral.

As cathedrals go, it’s not as gloriously adorned as others in Europe, but it has been around a long time, dating to the 1600’s.  The wood carving of the altar is impressive, and the ceiling paintings look like something local artist Edvard Munch would have painted (more on him in a bit).

The best view is looking back towards the organ.

We had excellent weather walking back from dinner that night, and ran across this statue of Roosevelt.  He is honored here as he was instrumental in rescuing Queen Marthe and her three children (one of which is the current King of Norway) when the Germans invaded Norway during WWII.  BTW, there are more statues in Oslo than I’ve seen in any European city…these people love their statuary!

Near our hotel was what I found to be a strange juxtaposition  of neighboring restaurants.  I wonder how they get along?

The next morning it was lightly raining, so we decided to visit one of Oslo’s many museums.  The Munch Museum opened in 2021, and has the largest collection of Munch’s work in the world, with over 26,000 pieces.

The current exhibition, Trembling Earth, was our favorite part of the museum.

Munch is known worldwide for his “The Scream” painting, and to be honest we had no idea what to expect from the rest of his work, but it turns out we loved it!  Below is “The Magic Forest”, from 1919-25.

We also particularly liked “The Storm”, from 1893.  This painting is said to be a precursor to his painting of the original version of “The Scream”.

This painting is called “The Sun”, from 1912-13, and is widely considered one of his best works.  There are multiple versions of this painting.

On the next floor up, in another exhibition area, is a set “The Scream” art works.  He actually created four of these, two in paint and two in pastels.  Below is a lithograph which was produced for a very short time period, with only a few remaining.

Due to potential damage from light, this small cramped space only has one “The Scream” artwork revealed at once.  They close one and open another at half hour increments.  You can see the crowd gathered at the half hour waiting for a new reveal.

We came back 15 minutes later and still had to wait in line just to take a photo of this painted version.  The first painted version is in Oslo’s National Museum, which we hope to visit another day.  We didn’t bother waiting another half hour to see the final pastel version held by the museum.

One last shot of another “The Sun” painting.  I guess he knew a good thing and kept going back to it!

Up next, we try to get over our jet lag and visit a few more sites in Oslo.