Sculptures and Museums

My trip was nearly over before it had barely started this morning. The combination of electric trams and looking right instead of left and stepped out as a tram came by. Fortunately there was enough space between the kerb and the train that I wasn’t in any real danger. A stark reminder though.

I took the tram to the Vineland Park which is a huge park with over 200 sculptures by Gustav Vigeland. The sculptures are all of people in a variety of poses. There’s a lot of symbolism in the sculptures. The Monolith (pillar) is sculpted from one piece of stone.
The park itself is lovely and I spent a good hour or so wandering around. Just before I left I went to the toilet. That cost me 20 NOK which is about $3.

I was planning to catch the bus but the hop on hop off bus came along so I caught that down to the Folk Museum on the Bygdoy Peninsula. You could probably spend a week at the museum and still not see anything. It’s an open air museum with more than 160 buildings and they are separated into farm buildings and town buildings. Each area of Norway had its own culture with some being more isolated than others. I started with a walking tour in which we saw a middle class farmer’s buildings. Due to Norway being so mountainous the buildings were built in 2 rows. The top row for the people buildings and the bottom row for the animal buildings. Interestingly unless they were rich farmers didn’t have chickens. This was because they ate the same food as people. This who did have chooks usually kept them in the house and they ate the crumbs off the floor.

We moved to rich farmer’s buildings and one major difference was windows. Windows were expensive and taxed. In the same area was a Stave church. Stave churches used to be common in Norway and the construction is influenced by Viking construction techniques and the churches were bulk after Christianity came to Norway. Until the reformation the churches were standing room only and only lit by two candles. It originally came from Gol, Norway. There used to be to be over 1000 stave churches in Norway, there are 28 left.
Once the tour was finished we could wander around as we liked. I saw multiple farm house set ups which were all similar but varied by region.
There’s also and old towns section including one apartment building at was demolished in 1999 and rebuilt at the museum.

Again while I was waiting for the bus the hop on hop off bus came along so I got on that and went down the end of the peninsula where there were 3 more museums.
I started with lunch. I tried brown cheese which I’d read about and was keen to try. It’s made from whey and milk or cream. It’s boiled down so more than 80% of the liquid has evaporated and served in thin slices although apparently you can also buy it in a tube. From videos I watched before my trip i believe brown cheese icecream is a thing. The cheese had a buttery caramelised taste to it. It’s not necessarily something I will go out of my way to eat again.

I then went into the Maritime museum which had a large exhibition centred on the cruise ship industry both in Norway and then the rest of the world when Norwegian companies expanded. Interestingly the coastal steamship route which is what I’ll be taking next week was not mentioned.
They were also playing a video of a ship sailing to Chile around Cape Horn. Footage was incredible, what a hard life they had on board and also dealing with the weather.
They also had an exhibition of paintings of life on the sea/ocean.

I then had to make a choice between the Kon tiki museum which was about Thor Heyerdahl’s trips in the Pacing islands and the Fram museum which was all about the Polar expeditions. I chose the Fram museum and it was amazing. The boat was quite small really considering where it went. You could go on the deck on the ship and they had an ice storm experience where you walked though a polar accommodation set up and through an ice tunnel. It was cold! Interesting though.

I caught the ferry back to Aker Brygge in the main part of Oslo. I realised the ferry had two stops so I got off and got back on again to do the entire trip.
Aker Brygge has quite a lot going on with many different buildings including a fancy fish market and the Nobel Peace Centre. It was getting on for 6pm so I took a look at the food vans that were in the area. Food in Norway is expensive. Probably more so because I’m in tourist areas. Lunch was about hall my daily food budget so I was looking for a cheaper dinner. I sound a sausage van that did high quality sausages. I had a moose sausage which to be honest just tasted like a really nice sausage. However I can now say I’ve eaten both brown cheese and moose.

Caught the tram back to the hotel and at 9:20pm I’m ready for bed. I was awake at 4:45am and gave up going back to sleep around 6am.Leia mais