Scandinavia Trip: Day 8 – Central Oslo

We had a late start due to my late arrival yesterday. Johnny and I went to the Vigeland Park at around eleven, after which we visited May at her apartment. The Vigeland Park seemed to be very popular with tourists from across the globe, and it truly is a bizarre sight that merits a visit. Abounding in strangely positioned statues of naked human bodies, it is a puzzling, almost unsettling place.

We had lunch at May’s and continued afterwards on a tour of the city centre. We walked past the Royal Palace and the National Theatre, making a stop inside the Oslo Cathedral. Its murals, thoroughly Scandinavian in their colours and expressiveness, are not to be missed. While May went to pick up our friend Jason from the train station, Johnny and I continued to the Munch Museum, where we stayed for almost two hours.

Perhaps we would have stayed for a shorter time, but the museum has instituted an interesting half-hourly schedule for rotating its most famous works – different iterations of The Scream. Every thirty minutes, one of the three artworks is concealed while another is revealed in a dimly lit room. These artworks are a sketch and two coloured versions of the famous painting. The museum justifies this decision as necessary for the protection of the artworks, which are very sensitive to light (and I assume this is also the reason why the sketch is revealed twice as often as either of the other two pieces).

In the evening, our entire group of five people reconvened for dinner. We ate at Oslo Street Food, a venue that houses multiple food shops with cuisines ranging from Norwegian to Korean and Hawaiian. The choice was a very consensual one, satisfying everyone’s individual hankerings.  

Vestre Gravlund Chapel
The same
More of the same
A sculpture at Vigeland Park
The Monolith at Vigeland Park
An astronomical clock at Vigeland Park
A statue of two women
The Monolith from the other side
The same from closer-up
A wolf and babies
A man kicking a baby and a woman embraced by a demonic armadillo
A statue of Gustav Vigeland
Another view of Vigeland Park
The Royal Palace of Oslo
The Karl Johan Monument
The Royal Palace again
The Scandinavian Institute of Maritime Law
A Statue of Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
The Artesia Spa Grand Hotel
The same
Another house along Karl Johan Street
Oslo Cathedral
An old carving embedded in the corner of Oslo Cathedral
The ceiling of Oslo Cathedral
More of the ceiling
The pulpit of Oslo Cathedral
Different views of Oslo Cathedral
Christian IV Statue looking towards Oslo Cathedral
A fountain in front of the main train station
Oslo Opera House
An ink drawing of The Scream
Two paintings of The Scream
Friedrich Nietzsche as painted by Munch
Munch's Madonna
A bearded man under a woman's breasts
Another print
The view of Oslo from the Munch Museum
Another view
A painting by Munch, presumably on the same bridge as The Scream
Beneath the Red Apples
Oslo Opera House
The same
Edvard Grieg
Two more statues
The spire of a church

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