Sunday in Oslo

Sunday, May 3. After breakfast, we went to the dock (beside the Nobel Peace Prize Center) and boarded a ferry for a ten minute ride across the fjord to a museum housed in an A-frame building, The Fram Museum. The literal centerpiece of the museum is a wooden, four-masted ship built around 1890 by Mr. Fridtjof Nanson, a man of many accomplishments. He was the first to cross Greenland on skis. He worked to relieve Russian hunger, persecution of Armenians, border disputes between Turkey and Greece. He was Norway's first ambassador to the U.K. in London. He negotiated POW releases. And he built a uniquely designed ship, The Fram, with a double-hull so it could enter the waters of Antarctica and as the water froze into ice against it's sides, instead of crushing the ship, the ship would rise upward, lodge itself into the upper reaches of the ice and be able to float with ice as the ice itself floated with the strong currents. He had hoped he could, in that manner, float to the North Pole. He got close, but did not succeed. The ship was later used, in 1911, by Roald Amundsen in his successful mission to be the first to reach the South Pole, where he planted the Norwegian flag. When The Fram was retired it was brought into the harbor, pulled up onto dry land and the museum, in which we were standing, was constructed around the ship. In 1922, for all his accomplishments, Fridtjof Nanson, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Afterward, while Sam and Wes did people-watching on the harbor, I visited the Nobel Peace Institute. Really, I only visited it's bookshop, but I swooned with appreciation, gratitude, pride and relief-that-they-existed over the photos and words of past winners: Mandela, Tutu, Mother Teresa, Theodore Roosevelt, Martin Luther King, Jr., etc. (One semi-creepy, sort-of-out-of-place, intended-to-be-humorous item they offered for sale was a Monopoly-like board game called: The War on Terror.)

We had a casual lunch in a pastry shop with hot bowls of tasty caffe latte with a sandwich, split three ways, and buttery, fresh, warm pastry followed by a visit to the National Museum to see the iconic painting, The Scream, by Edvard Munch. Last year, in NYC we went to see a Gustav Klimt painting that had just been put on exhibit. That particular painting is what you think of when you think of Klimt. In print the painting is gorgeous. In person, the painting is stunning. The surface is rich, seductive, opulent, luxurious like opening a treasure chest and seeing glittering precious gems. So I wanted to see if seeing in person, Munch's, The Scream, was a richer experience than seeing it in print. My opinion: I did not think it was. However, The Scream, was stolen about five years ago, cut from it's frame, I think. So, it warranted a visit to honor it's return. Otherwise, the museum has a terrific collection of 19th-Century paintings by Norwegian and Swedish painters that beautifully document the life and times of Scandinavians and also the particular beauty of the fjords.

After the Museum, we wandered in the nearby city square anchored on one end by the Royal Palace, on the other by the Parliament building. Just off the perimeter is the odd-looking City Hall (where Nobel Prizes ceremonies are held) and the Nobel Peace Institute. In the center of the plaza is the National Theater. On this day, the plaza was the terminus of a marathon and were there in time to see and applaud and shout, "woo-hooo" to the runners at the finish line.

From there we walked 3/4's of a mile to visit the newly built, just opened, Oslo Opera House, designed by french architect, Jean Nouvel. At first glance the building seems unfortunately situated: bordered on one side by an un-grand train station and a noisy freeway and on the other side by the water. But on second glance you notice the white rectangular stone slabs of the building rising out of the water as if it is forming a shore or a beach. The white stone slabs continue their gradual, gentle, incremental rise right over the glass atrium of the lobby and eventually over the rooftop of the main auditorium. All of the stone surface is intended to be inhabited by, walked on by the public. And on this day it was wildly popular. It was a white, stone, split-level, iceburg, public plaza rising from the water crawling with snoopy, excited, curious, smiling people all over it like ants on a picnic table. And underneath it all is an opera house of about 800 seats with three balconies about four rows deep. With a fantastic curtain over the stage that seems like shiny, gracefully-crumpled aluminum foil. It warrants a return visit to hear performances.

At last, dinner time. We arrived to an almost empty restaurant with chandeliers, mirrored walls, belle-epoque art-nouveau decor , and a violin and piano duo playing in the overhead gallery. We sat at a perfectly situated table, centered in a window, overlooking trees with new springtime leaves framing the late-19th-Century National Theater. We had gravlax, aquavit, moules et pomme frites, seafood soup, salmon, spanish tortilla, cotes d'rhone. We were stuffed. We walked to the hotel. It was 9:00 and still bright cheery daylight.

And now, once more, it is bedtime. The alarm is set for 5:30 a.m. The train leaves for Stockholm at 7:20 a.m. And we will grab a quick breakfast from 6:30 to 6:40 a.m. Good night!


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