August 21-23, 2015: as I wrote in my last post, we had an informative and enjoyable time at the Design Museum, among the royal dresses, the period rooms and the bizarre modern chairs, and a decidedly unsuccessful time at the History Museum. We spent the whole of the next day visiting a series of museums out at Bygdøy. A very crowded bus delivered us to a very crowded museum, the Viking Ship Museum. This one held a number of artifacts recovered with the ships, not just the ships, and if I had to pick just one museum it would be Oslo’s. Despite the crowds, I was impressed by the layout, the information and especially by the artifacts, which included some wonderfully decorated sleds and a cart.
Moving on, we found the excellent outdoor museum much less crowded. Almost deserted, in fact, which seemed strange, as I thought it one of the best such museums I had seen. Perhaps not surprising, as it was the first. Of particular interest was an apartment building, where a series of flats had been decorated to represent different eras. A couple of the flats were almost exact replicas (in one case the architect owners had detailed records, in another the occupant had died in the flat, leaving her belongings intact), others were imaginary creations. One large house had been home first to the wealthy and influential Collett family (expat Brits) and subsequently to a publishing operation. As both our father and grandfather had worked for a printing and bookbinding concern we were especially interested in the displays here. For Norwegians they also had particular significance as the founder, Jorgen Wright Cappelen, had been at the forefront of the movement to replace Danish with a written Norwegian language. We finished our visit at the beautifully decorated stave church, the only one I had seen.
Then we took the bus further south to the Fram and Kon-Tiki museums. Looking at all the photos of the frozen north, and south, I marveled at the hardihood of the men who had manned the exploratory expeditions, but my choice would definitely have been the Kon Tiki! The Fram museum offered a wealth of information, including some on Scott’s ill fated South Pole expedition, and on Amundsen’s subsequent activities, and the Fram herself was there, available for boarding. By the time we reached our final museum of the day, the Kon Tiki we were running out of both time and energy, but still appreciated Heyerdahl’s intelligence and persistence. You have to admire someone willing to put his theories to the test personally.
Our final museum, on our last day in Oslo, was the Munch (no photos allowed), where a number of people were in line to see the exhibition on Van Gogh and Munch. I have to confess that while I admire Munch’s work, I prefer Van Gogh. Afterwards, we wandered through the botanical gardens, conveniently located close at hand. A number of sources had recommended visiting Frogner Park to see the 212 sculptures by Vigeland. We looked at photos, we looked at what we took to be a couple of his sculptures in front of the (uninspiring) city hall, and we agreed to skip the park.
The morning of the 24th we loaded the dishwasher, put the apartment key in our AirBnB host’s mail box, and walked over to the bus station to catch the airport bus. We both had window seats on our BA flight to Heathrow, with an empty middle seat next to us. We had bought baguettes in the airport, although BA did serve a light lunch. So the northern leg of my trip was over, and the UK leg beginning. My niece’s wedding, the catalyst for the trip, would be on the 29th.
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