Walking Through Oslo

After the visit to Rainbow Studio we began a walking tour of Oslo with Kari Grande. We walked down the path by the river, going through the old textile mill area. The river was lovely, and the coolness that we felt walking beside the water and in the shade of the trees was welcome on a very hot day. There were some nice waterfalls and interesting buildings. Along the way Kari would give us bits of history, pointing out various monuments, buildings and sites.

Here are a few cool things we saw: the first iron suspension bridge in Norway (with a sign that read “100 men can cross this bridge at a time, if they are not marching”); an old concrete grain terminal converted into student housing; an old church (the Gamle Aker Kirke - literally “Old Aker Church” in Norwegian) - from the 11th century, but still in use today. Kari was baptised, confirmed and married in this church. We had a young woman as a guide, and it turns out that she is nearing the completion of her studies to be ordained as a pastor (or priest as they call them here) in the Church of Norway. It was good to see some evidence of faith in the younger generation over here.

We ended up at the central Library (Kari worked in a library for many years and seemed to be a devoted user of the library system, including finding the choir recording of Dype Stille Sterke Milde which I had mentioned in this blog). Downtown Oslo was interesting, especially the street that had quotes from Henrik Ibsen, perhaps Norway’s most famous and significant author, embedded in the sidewalk. From downtown we took the subway to Oslo’s most famous tourist attraction - Vigeland Park.

It was amazing to see this nicely landscaped park filled with bronze and granite sculptures by this early 20th century artist. There are over 200 large sculptures in the park, and much small detail work on things like the fountains and stairways. We found the famous statue called “Angry Boy” which has apparently been stolen and retrieved twice in its history. We concluded our visit to the park at the monolith, and huge sculpted column that is supposed to represent the struggle of humanity to improve its place in the world. When the park first opened the Norwegians weren’t too sure of it because of all the nude figures, but from my perspective Vigeland was simply following in the footsteps of the Greco-Roman, and later the Renaissance artists who desired to show the human form in its most basic and beautiful form. Certainly modern Norwegians have no problems with these statues, and as a society are much less inhibited about their bodies than Canadians - except of course for the Muslim Norwegian women, of which we saw many (covered up as required), especially in Oslo.