Oslo

My shortened bike ride was still quite nice as we stayed in resort villages on the shores of the Oslo Fjord, and rode through the surrounding countryside.  Finally, on Friday I arrived in Oslo with the opportunity to see more than the inside of the airport.

Norway’s history is a bit odd as it was allied with Denmark and at odds with Sweden for most of it, so the independent country is little more than a hundred years old.  Oslo’s history is interesting in a different way.  Logging was a huge industry here and all of the old buildings were made of wood.  Oslo thus suffered no fewer than fourteen major fires.  Finally, they (that is, a Danish king) decided to move the city center and rebuild with brick and stone.  (Duh!)  As a result, there are almost no buildings here from before the eighteenth century.  

In recent years, Oslo has undergone a second rebuilding.  Using its oil money wisely, Norway has invested in modern buildings while also repurposing old buildings such as factories.  Highways have been moved underground so the city streets are fairly uncrowded and there is little street noise.  A tax on cars coming into the city helps keep the streets uncrowded.  As a modern European city, there is a modern, efficient system of trams, buses, and metros, as well as several streets dedicated to walking, miles of bike lanes, and buses and trams that go everywhere.

A silo repurposed as a dormitory

Modern building complex called the Barcode

As a very modern city in a very affluent and modern country, Oslo, like China, is a nearly cashless society where everything is paid not with a card but a phone app.  At one food court booth I went to, you order and pay on your phone and the one man working there sends a text when your food is ready.  He would not let me either order or pay in person.

Two other weird food facts that I am not sure that I believe.  According to one guide, the most eaten food in Oslo is …. wait for it … tacos.  Really?  Also, with a population of only six million, he said that Norway consumes eleven percent of all Pepsi Max worldwide.  I feel like I am not doing my share.  The explanation for this factoid might be that we drink way more Diet Pepsi in the US, but that is not available here, just Pepsi Max which is also sugar free.

Another weird factoid ... I'm not sure if it is a sign of modernity ... The first time I left my hotel room, I checked the door and it did not lock.  I kept opening and closing it, but it would not lock, so I went down to the desk to report the "problem."  The very nice man at the desk explained that as a safety feature, the door locks after about thirty seconds.  In case there is a fire and you run out without your key, you can run back in for something (or someone?) you forgot.  Oh, sure.  I'd probably want to run back in if the room were on fire.  I guess after fourteen major fires you think about emergency measures.

I took a walking tour of Oslo on my first day to get myself oriented, and then a couple more walks in interesting neighborhoods.  There are a few older sites like the medieval Akershus Fortress and the old City Hall, but not surprisingly, most of the sites are modern.  The Akers River flows through Oslo for ten miles with green area and walking/bike paths along the entire way.  I should have realized when the guide said there were dozens of waterfall that we would be walking uphill the whole way, but it was still worth it.  Beautiful area in the middle of the city.

The highlight was a tour I took of the Oslo Opera and Ballet House.  Just ten years old, it looks like a glacier and you can walk on the various roof levels.  It is designed to be for the people, both inside and out.  The tour took us through the inner workings and backstage area.  Half the building which is not usually seen by audiences contains opera, ballet, and orchestra practice areas, administrative offices, and a huge costume design and storage area.  The backstage was huge because there are actually three interchangeable stages including one that revolves and can be lowered into the basement and two other stages that can be put in its place with entire sets on them.  Also, the ballet floor is suspended in four pieces and can be lowered into place.  Who knew that operas and ballets have different floors?  Makes sense.

From the inside you can see people walking on the roof

When in Oslo … of course, I went to the Edvard Munch Museum.  His whole body of work was impressive but, of course, you have to see The Scream.  They have three of the four copies of it here but they only show one at a time, rotating them every hour to protect them from too much light.  Unfortunately, in the time I was there, I saw the print and the pastel, but not the painting.  Everyone knows the mask, but I didn’t remember that it is set against a vividly red sunset. Also, the original title was The Scream of Nature.  The androgynous figure is not screaming; rather, the figure is covering its ears so as not to hear nature screaming.  It turns out that Munch was frightened by the red sunset. Hmmm… okay.

Another artistic highlight of Oslo is Vigeland Park - the largest sculpture park dedicated all to the work of one artist, Gustav Vigeland. There are hundreds of sculptures of nudes, singly and in various somewhat bizarre combinations. Like this one of a pile of babies.

Perhaps the most famous of the sculptures is Angry Boy.

I also enjoyed visiting two of the museums on the Bygdoy Peninsula, which my handy transportation app told me to go to by bus and return by ferry.  The Kon Tiki museum is dedicated to Thor Heyerdahl who had a theory that the people in Polynesia came originally not from Asia but from South America.  As he wasn’t believed, he and his crew built a balsa wood raft and sailed along the ocean current (without steering) for 101 days and did in fact reach Polynesia.  He built and sailed other boats that he designed in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans.

Next door to the Kon Tiki Museum was the Fram Museum.  I had learned about the Fram at the Polar Museum in Tromso.  It was the specially built boat that was designed to go into the Arctic ice, get stuck there in the current, and thereby reach the North Pole.  I had gotten the impression at the Polar Museum that the expedition was a failure, but in fact the boat, which is in the eponymous Fram Museum, did spend three years in the Arctic ice stream, surviving with everyone on board actually gaining weight.  There was just a slight miscalculation:  the ice stream goes in a circle around the Pole, so the ship never crossed it.

It is totally amazing to me that so many people, and in particular, so many Norwegians, were willing to go on long, impossible expeditions to prove rather dubious points or to be the first one THERE.   An interesting exhibit showed the “race” in 1911 between Roald Amundsen and Robert Scott to be the first to the South Pole.  Amundsen got there first and left a letter for Scott to bring back to his family if he didn’t make it back, but it was Scott, who arrived a few months later and saw the letter, who did not make it back. Amundsen, who is still a Norwegian hero, may have also reached the North Pole first as other claims are dubious. He died himself on an Arctic rescue mission.

I am spending my final two days in Norway on my own expedition. Hardly a leap into the unknown, it is marketed as Norway in a Nutshell, and involves three trains, a boat, a bus, and a plane ride back to Oslo. Can't wait.