We are now back in Oslo for a couple days before we head to Bergen and then home. Today’s somewhat unintentional focus ended up being on outdoor art, starting with a sculpture garden and then following up with a lot of street art and public art. We started out at the Vigeland Park which is a sculpture park where all the sculptures are by a single artist (Gustav Vigeland, 1869-1943). Before we headed to the sculpture park I mentioned to Megan that all of Vigeland’s art features naked people and/or babies. She wasn’t particularly excited about that, but agreed to go, and at least she knew what to expect … a bit. I’d say even knowing that, we all found some of the works a bit hard to fathom.
That’s not to say they were all weird or bad. We definitely appreciated the artistry of many of the works.
I really liked the ironwork gates and gate ornamentation at the entrance which Vigeland also designed.
His masterwork in the park is called Monolith (Monolitten). It is 46 feet tall and depicts the cycle of life — with babies at the top and eventually corpses at the bottom. It is made out of one solid piece of stone which took 14 years to carve.
Afterwards we saw the oldest church in Oslo, and the cemetery where Ibsen and Munch are buried. We didn’t have the stamina to search out their graves but by chance Megan noticed Thor Heyerdahl’s name on one of the stones, so we did see that and think again about Kon-Tiki. We had lunch in a part of town called Grunerlokka (known as the “hipster” district) street art is encouraged in some areas. Some of the street art is graffiti-like and some is more muralistic. Here is a sampling.
Oh, and did you hear that saying that walls have ears? This was particularly true at one wall we saw in Grunerlokka. In fact it also had an eye and a nose.
Then we went to the botanic garden where we saw some unusual plants and some more interesting outdoor art — this work depicting giant maple fruits made of willow, which reminded us of the Stickwork art of Toad Hall in the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden. However, this was done by a different artist named Tom Hare.
It was cooler in Oslo today than it was last week, in the 70s instead of the 90s, and it is supposed to be like that tomorrow. That’s a real relief! As we walked back to the train station we saw one last large public art piece, depicting scuba divers in the air. For dinner tonight we are making a halibut that we found at a local fish market near our home exchange house.
Balents Trip Blog 