Day 142: Oslo

After doing some research I came to the conclusion that there wasn't really much specific things I cared about seeing in Oslo. That isn't to say that I wasn't interested in the city - there just weren't any specific sights I felt I had to see, so I had a lot of freedom to just explore. It helped that today was a beautiful day for once, so I was quite content spending the day walking around.

My hostel is on the north side of the city, so I started off by walking downtown and looking around a few of the shopping areas. I worked my way to the harbor and checked out the port. There is a lot of construction going on in the city and there were a lot of fancy new offices and apartments going up.

I wasn't specifically looking for street art, but some of the usuals - Alice Pasquini and C215 had been through recently, probably together since their stencils were always close to each other.

Another place worth mentioning is a toy store I came across, called Riktige Leker. I don't know if it was typical of Norweigan toy stores, but the front windows had massive displays of little figurines all in the same scale - sort of the modern day equivelant of army men I guess, only larger and much more detailed, and ranging from fairy princesses to fantasy warriors to normal animals to hybrid dinosaur men. The range was impressive, and if I had room to carry them I definitely would have bought a few - kid's toys or not. I just like toys that encourage imagination - and these ones looked really cool on top of that.

Then it was back up north past the castle and to the Vigeland Sculpture Park, which was one of the few things I felt I had to see. I'm not sure if anybody else has heard of it before, but it's reputation preceded it for me, and it's reputation is...well...that it's a bit strange. The park contains over 200 granite and bronze sculptures made by Gustav Vigeland, and all of the sculptures are of nude people. That in itself isn't terribly strange, since there are an awful lot of nude sculptures in Europe, but these sculptures get a bit weird. Easier to show than explain. Things start off simply, with sculptures of people standing there, or hugging, or a woman raising a baby.

But Gustav isn't content with just the peaceful bits of humanity. Some of the sculptures start to get more aggressive and and violent.

Now, I'm not an expert in interpreting sculpture, but at the very least I think it's safe to say that man is punting and flinging babies. And it gets weirder. The centerpiece of the garden is a monolith carved out of a single giant piece of granite, surrounded by smaller granite sculptures.

The monolith is a mass of entangled bodies, reaching up into the sky.

When the Museum of Archaeology in Athens lent a sculpture of Zeus to a museum in United States the public outcry at its nudity was so strong that the museum dressed it in clothes for the duration of its visit - for some reason I don't think they'd think too highly of this park.

I can't remember anything else too noteworthy so I'll stop there. Tomorrow is my last full day in Europe, and what I do for it depends on the weather. I'll try to squeeze a post in tomorrow with some information on what's to come next as well.