Where in the world is Gwannel Sandiego?

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Sunndalsøra or bust!

Not a lot to report, we spent all day driving from Oslo to Sunndalsøra (see below). It was a fair old way, but we managed to make it without any major hiccups, with all of us in one piece and a decent mood - result! It was actually a very scenic route, running alongside a big lake for part of the way, and rivers most of the way. The later part of the route is also quite mountainous. I know it's a horrible cliché that people use about nearly anywhere in the world, but it really does look quite a bit like New Zealand! However, we are now nearly as far north as the bottom of Iceland.

Here's some pics and videos I took en route.

They're just waiting to collect enough samples

View of Lillehammer, home of the 1994 Winter Olympics. You can just see (presumably) a ski run in the upper left. The red thing is the reflection of my iPad in the car window

I try to follow the golden rule of cinematography: make as many rapid, jerky movements as possible in order to convey a sense of speed and excitement

Driving alongside the lake

The view from our hotel carpark

Sunday, August 12, 2012

Angst and Art in Oslo

We came up with a perfect strategy to make the most out of Oslo with the Oslo Pass, buying a 24 hour pass for 270 kroner, and then starting it at lunchtime on Thursday, so that we got Thursday afternoon and Friday morning for sightseeing, rather than trying to wear ourselves out cramming a million activities into one day. It was a good money-saver too - I think if we'd paid for everything, including a 24-hour transport pass, separately, it would have 470 kroner (65€). Everything's so dear in Oslo, it pays to economise where you can!

Anyway, in accordance with the plan, we were up bright and early on Friday morning to go to the Munch Museum. I had seen (photos of) maybe three or four Munch works only, so other than this:

Argggggh!

Munch was pretty new to me. I was pleasantly surprised with his oeuvre. While some of it was dark in emotional tenor (as you'd expect from a man who had a nervous breakdown), most of the works were colourful and sometimes even humorous.

In person, The Scream is beautiful, especially the colours of the sunset and the way the swirling, flowing lines work together in harmony throughout the painting. There are four versions of The Scream - the one in the Munch museum is the latest, from 1910 - and it is one of a set of three paintings: The Scream, Anxiety and Despair. This version of The Scream was stolen in 2004 and not recovered until two years later.

You'd think he'd have used the same-sized canvas

The Murderer

I think this was just called Model on a Couch or something. Munch wasn't very creative with his titles

And this was something like Girl in a Red Dress on a Couch (or similar)

The Munch Museum was quite small (a good size, really) and only took about 45 minutes to look through. Then it was off to the Historical Museum before our pass ran out. The ground floor featured Norwegian history from prehistoric times to the Middle Ages. My favourite part was the Middle Ages (of course), especially a spectacular painted ceiling from a wooden Stave Church, dating to the late 13th century. Upstairs they had ethnographic collections, including Egyptian mummies, Arctic peoples, and North and South America; Norwegian coins through the ages (I was surprised to see they only started making coins with holes in the middle in the 20th century, I wonder why); and temporary exhibitions, this time including an exhibition on horses which was much more interesting than I, not a horsey person, would have expected.

The Viking section featured a ton of these bizarre cloth creations, here featuring the goddess Freya

Judging by the hammer, this is Thor

A medieval altar cover. These guys' facial expressions crack me up

Got an enemy, a severed horse's head, and a wooden pole? Then make a Nithing Pole in order to bring down the wrath of the gods on your enemies! A totally sane how-to guide in the horse exhibition

The fantastic 13th century painted ceiling

Close-up of Elizabeth visiting the Virgin Mary

Herod listening to the devil telling him to slaughter the innocents

A carved doorway from a Stave Church telling the story of Sigurd slaying the dragon. This is the same story that features in the Nibelungen. I actually read this story in the original medieval Icelandic (the Völsunga Saga) when I was at university. Don't ask me to read any medieval Icelandic these days though!

Gunnar, another character in the saga of Sigurd, was thrown into a pit of serpents for some reason. He played the harp with his toes and managed to send all the serpents except one to sleep. The remaining serpent bit him to death. Bummer.

Ha, this guy! We saw the carved version of this head at the Viking Ship museum, but I like him even better chilling out here.

An unusual Viking water jug

After the museum, we chilled out for a bit in the sunshine and then walked down to the sea to check out some lovely views of the city and the harbour from the site of Akershus castle and fortress, originally built in the late 13th century, but much altered over the years.

Fountain in front of the town hall

Part of the Akershus Castle and Fortress

View of the harbour

If you've ever wondered what I sound like, you can hear my obnoxious accent and inane commentary in this video of the view from the fortress:

In the evening, we had a lovely meal of tapas near our apartment, including patatas bravas that were miles better than I had in Barcelona, lovely soft bread with aioli, delicious chicken, tender squid, spicy chorizo, etc. All topped off with (in my case) a yummy chocolate mousse cake with a tasty raspberry coulis. I think we did very well navigating through the menu as well, since it was only in Spanish and Norwegian!

We're taking a wee roadtrip up north tomorrow. It's been mostly lovely weather so far, so fingers crossed it will continue!

Friday, August 10, 2012

A little bit of Nordic history

Today featured a ferry trip over to the peninsula of Bygdoy to see the Viking Ship Museum and the Norwegian Museum of Cultural History.

The former features three Viking ships, used to bury several important chieftans or royals, along with some of the grave goods that were buried with them. They also had their skeletons - one was of a giant (his thigh bones were about twice as big as a normal thigh bone) and another was an old woman who died of cancer. It's amazing what can be learned from bones that are nearly 1000 years old.

The Museum of Cultural History is an open-air museum featuring old buildings from different periods of Norwegian history. You can go inside most of them, and some have either exhibitions or people dressed up all old-timey who can tell you about life in Norway in the past. It seemed like, for the most part, it would have been pretty uncomfortable. There were 17th century buildings (based on much older designs) that were still in use in the 19th century - one room with a fire in the middle and a hole in the roof to let (some of) the smoke out. Some of the buildings from later periods included an apartment building with interiors representing Norwegian life and design from the 19th century to today, and public and commercial buildings such as an old-fashioned grocery store, bank, pharmacy etc. It was a lot of fun wandering around and definitely made a change from a traditional-style museum.