Saturday May 27, Oslo
On our last full day in Oslo we were going to check out two sculpture parks we had read about. The first wasn’t far from our hotel. It was located on the harbor front near the Nobel Peace Center. According to Alfred Nobel’s will, the Peace Prize has been awarded in Oslo ever since its beginning in 1901, while the other four prizes are handled by Swedish committees. Nobel left no explanation as to why the prize for peace was to be awarded in Oslo. There are theories, but I didn’t investigate, you can if you want to. The Center is closed for renovation. Sue had done some investigating of the sculpture parks, so we had an idea where to look for the sculptures. We found a sign, as shown in a photo. It listed eight sculptures located in the waterfront area. Our next goal was to find the actual sculptures. There were six located near the sign. The 6th, “Things For A House On An Island” doesn’t look like much of a sculpture, but then I’m not an artist. We went looking for the next two, and hit a bit of a snag. We think we found the 7th, a Green Head. We didn’t see a name plate, but this had to be #7, what else could it be? So we kept roaming around looking for #8 when we saw three concrete structures, but they didn’t have a name plate either. We went back to the Green Head from a different direction, and that is when I saw the name plate for the Green Head on the wall next to the Head, #7, “Moonrise, East, November”. After I took a photo of this name plate I saw sculpture #8 high up on a wall across from #7, and I even found the name plate, “Edge II”. You can see it doesn’t take much to keep us busy, and happy.
Our next goal was the Vigeland Sculpture Park. This is the largest sculpture park by a single artist in the world, with more than 200 sculptures in bronze, granite and cast iron by acclaimed Norwegian sculptor Gustav Vigeland. We knew nothing about the park or the sculptor, and I haven’t looked up anything about the sculptor or the park. I plugged in the park’s name into Google Maps and found out the park was a 45 min. walk. So we were off. It took us more than 45 min. Have I mentioned how hard it is to read a map on a phone in bright sun shine? We would have to stop occasionally so I could find some shade to check that we were on the right route. We stopped at a park along the way to rest. The park had three concrete art pieces, so I took some photos. That is when I noticed that these concrete works were on the lawn of the Vigeland Museum. We only had to walk a few more minutes to reach Vigeland Sculpture Park. The place is big, and there are a ton of sculptures as you can see from the photos. There were also a lot of people in the park. After we had enough of the park we decided to take a tram back to our hotel, we are old after all. On the car we sat with a Norwegian couple. The husband had gone to college at the University of Texas, and he didn’t have an accent. We talked a little about how the US has changed in the 40 years since he went to school there. He told us that in Norway, anyone who wants to work can find a job and make a decent living. They got off a few stops before our stop near our hotel. We rested a bit before walking about 10 min. to St. Olav's Cathedral. The 18:00 Mass was over in about 35 min. We had passed several bars/restaurants on the walk to the church, so we picked one and went in for dinner. The one thing we haven’t been able to find at our meals here in Oslo is a beer with an alcohol content above 5%. We have become very fond of Belgian Triple Karmelite beers, or even a Quadrupel when we can find one. We did have a very nice dinner, and a few bears. There was a group of US Navy men and one woman who came into the bar for drinks and perhaps dinner. They were also from the Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier. When we paid for our dinner, the server told us that Americans got a discount on the German sausage, because the US helped Norway defeat the Germans in WW II. Then it was back to the hotel to for our last night in Oslo before we fly to Amsterdam on Sunday.
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