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Ski-jumper or Viking – what’s your ambition?

By John Graham

As you stand before the 1,150-year-old carved prow of the Oseberg Viking ship, looking at the holes carved for the oars of 30 men, you can imagine the scene.

The boat swiftly beaches as the crew jump into shallow water and run, shouting Norse cries and waving their broadswords, up the beach to overwhelm the terrified inhabitants of a sea hamlet in the North of England or in France.

The Vikings terrorized the lands to their south, by landing from many fast boats to plunder, pillage the villages and rape the women. This picture is true but they also established colonies and traded with indigenous populations from Vinland, present day Labrador, throughout the Mediterranean to the Middle East and Baghdad, as well as east to Siberia. They were great sailors and ever since those days, Norwegians have lived on and with the sea. It is second nature to them.

Oslo is a city poised between the mountains and the sea, but it is the sea that controls its soul.  So, when one visits the city it is necessary first to leave it … to take a small boat from the Town Hall quayside … to BygdØy.  BygdØy is really a peninsular but arriving there by ferry leaves the impression that Norway keeps its most treasured artifacts securely on an island, as they should.

The Vikingskiphuset houses three Viking ships recovered from clay burial sites, which together with a cart, sled, hut and smaller boats, have been restored wonderfully. The original carving is intricate and it is difficult to tear oneself away from imagining those romantic Vikings.

However, there is more to be seen on BygdØy. First, a folk museum complete with stave church and earth-covered buildings and farms moved from different regions of the country. The stave church is decorated with relief paintings that are difficult to see in the gloom so take a flashlight.

Just down the road from the Folk Museum another building houses Thor Heyerdahl’s adventure and research reed boats: the Kon-Tiki and the Ra.  The Kon-Tiki, built only of reeds, floated thousands of miles on ocean currents thus demonstrating how reed boats probably brought inhabitants of Peru to southern pacific islands such as Easter Island.

Across the road a triangular building houses the Fram, an Arctic and Antarctic exploration vessel used by both Nansen and Amundsen. The Fram sailed further south and north than any other boat. To the north it was intentionally trapped in ice to float even further north than it could sail.

Outside the Fram’s building is a small, almost unnoticed wooden sailing vessel, called Osa. This tiny boat was the first to sail the North-West passage from Greenland to Nome, Alaska.  What a trial that must have been?

Together with another Maritime Museum, BygdØy records the Norwegian seas and explorations, so that when the small ferry carries you back to the Town Hall you feel that you have earned your sea legs and you know something of what inspires Norwegians today.

Oslo is a clean city, the coffee bars are excellent, and the buses and metro are efficient. However, everything is very expensive … a short bus ride can cost you $5 and a small glass of wine will set you back $10. Still, there is a solution. As soon as you arrive purchase an Oslo Pass. It cost about $45 for 48 hours but it covers all buses, trains and boats as well as providing entry to all the museums and galleries. It is well worth the cost. 

There is no solution to the cost of a glass of wine except your own importation. The high price of alcohol is said to be because Norway has, and always has had, a drinking problem. They are said to drink to become drunk, so it was no surprise that we met more drunks in the evening than in any other European city … but they were harmless.

There are 30 museums and galleries in the city, enough to keep you busy for a week. One gallery is the City Hall (Rådhus) itself.  Hall after hall and room after room are brightly painted in what seems the latest modernistic style, yet the style is really that of 1950 when the building was opened.

Oslo is described as the largest city in the world … in area that is, since the city limits encompass many square miles of open mountains around the built-up city. It’s worth getting on top of a mountain to gain a view of the fjord and the easiest way is by taking the mountain train to Holmenkollen, the site of the Olympic ski-jump.

You could be inspired to fly through the air yourself from here until you look down the jump.  The jump has been rebuilt four times since 1892, each time higher and longer than before and it may be used again for the Olympics in 2009.

Where the mountain train returns the city, Gustave Vigeland, a sculptor, created a park, which is a celebration of the human body and the cycle of life. The park is crowned by monolith of white granite carved as a pile of 121 figures. Around the park, across the bridge, the fountain itself and up the steps to the monolith are hundreds of other groups of figures from the old to the very young. They are the sculptor’s life’s work and his studio abuts the park.

Every one seems to have heard of the painter Edvard Munch and his ‘Scream.’ If a painting is stolen, even if it is only one of many copies painted by the artist it becomes immediately famous. Fortunately, the National Gallery houses many fine paintings by other Norwegian artists. I particularly liked the heads by Christian Krohg and Erik Werenskiold is another painter I shall remember.

It rains in Norway at the end of the summer so galleries and museums are very welcome but since the city is surrounded by trees autumn colors shine after rain. The Akershus Slot is a castle facing the fjord and overlooking the quayside in front of the City Hall. Built in 1299 it provides treed walks just minutes from the quayside.  Here the Nazis held court in World War II and it is also where Quisling, the Norwegian traitor, was executed after the war. Touché.

The Norwegians are a proud race and they have a right to be. There are fewer of them than the population of one third of New York City but their literacy rate is 100% while ours in the USA is abysmally low. Their country reflects their education and it is well worth a visit.

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