Because we went to Sweden by Norwegian Air, we took a bus back to Oslo to catch our homeward-bound plane, allowing a day for sightseeing in the city first. My husband had been there in the 1960s; I had never been.
As I came out of the bus station wheeling my bag, I saw an activity that I had recently read was occurring in several countries. A barber was giving a haircut to a homeless man. Another man explained to passersby about an effort to raise money for one homeless person at a time. I was so happy to find a good place to unload the rest of my Swedish kroner.
Here are my Oslo photos. Some are self-explanatory, but you might be puzzled if I don’t explain the bubbling water: it kept the eggs hot at our amazing hotel breakfast.
The first of three museums we visited was the Edvard Munch Museum, where the author Karl Ove Knausgaard had curated a show. I love Munch, and although I would have liked some wall text about what was going on in his life when he painted various pictures (a fantastic 2001 show at Boston College did that), I came away with some good ideas for representing the bark of pine trees.
The Nobel Peace Museum had an outdoor mural to free-speech heroes around the world and a moving photography show about Syrian refugees in Lebanon and how they longed for home. The main exhibit felt ironic though, given that Peace Prize recipients have sometimes been tyrants. And this hit me hard: hundreds of prizes, so little peace.
The wall text at the Ibsen museum was great and got me interested in reading more of his plays. The book below is not unique in using Munch cover art. Many Norwegian books use Munch paintings on their covers. He captures something powerfully Norwegian.
