Friday, February 27, 2009
Oslo, Norway
Exploring Bygdo--The Viking Ships Museum:
I decided to devote Day Two to Bygdoy (Like Big Boy, except this is Big Doy!), a peninsular that juts into the fjord. Once an island, it was reclaimed by Karl Johans and now had a motorway that connects the island to the mainland. Claimed as prime real estate, it has a number of embassies and consulates located here as well as beautiful residential mansions and homes that were magically transformed into million-dollar beauties under the cover of winter. I loved the drive on Bus Number 30 that got me to Bygdoy and having purchased an Oslo Pass for 24 hours (220 kroner), I was able to visit all the museums on the peninsular free of charge as well as use all forms of transportation for free.
My first port of call was the Viking Ships Museum which is set in a fabulously designed building (by Arnestein Arneberg in 1914) in the shape of a cross—each arm containing one of the ships themselves. These ships were found in burial mounds (similar to the concept behind the Sutton Hoo Buried Viking ship and its contents in the British Museum) in southern Norway. The three 1000 year old Viking ships, the Oseberg, the Gokstad and the Tune ship (this one in the least well-preserved state) were excavated in the early years of the 20th century, then restored beautifully and exhibited in this museum where they stand as silent sentinels of Norway’s history, telling, nevertheless, many intriguing stories of belief in the afterlife. We saw a burial chamber as would have been on every ship together with a vast number of metal artifacts that were buried with the dead. The gold, silver and previous jewelry that would have also been buried with the dead Viking chieftains were plundered many years ago, but the articles left behind speak eloquently of a long lost civilization that once lorded it over the waters of Europe. The ships and the hoard left behind had me spellbound.
The Nordic Folk Museum:
A short stroll away along ice encrusted streets is the Nordic Folk Museum, a vast open air museum that documents the lives of Norwegians through the centuries. While it must seem like Disneyland in the summer when mobbed by tourists, it was empty but for a few school kids who had come with their teachers on field trips. Despite the cold, they enjoyed themselves fully in the open air running around in their winter gear and playing tag.
My tour book had informed me that there were three highlights I should not miss in this vast space and I headed first for Gamlebyen or Old Town, a cluster of homes, shops, post office, etc. dating from the last century and transported to this space in a bid to preserve them. These Tudor-like structures with their stucco walls and exposed beams had a quiet beauty about them. Inside, I could peak into the rooms and see the fitments that proclaimed the kind of rural lives led by Norway’s ordinary people back in the day. Following the path through the museum, I arrived at a grand building that was open. I pushed the heavy door and found myself in an apartment building. Each floor was recreated to produce an idea of what life would have been like in Oslo over the past century. There was, for instance, an apartment decorated to look like the interior of Torvald and Nora Helmer’s home in Ibsen’s A Doll’s House. This was superbly done and I felt as I was on the film set with Jane Harris and Jason Robards in the film version that I have seen. And wasn’t Torvald played by Christopher Plummer?
On another floor, there was a replica of the apartment once owned in the 1960s by Norway’s then Prime Minister. The Beatles played on the radiogram, Beatles and Rolling Stones posters filled the walls of the teenage son’s room and the gadgetry in the kitchen spoke of cozy family dinners in the winter. Loving interior decoration and design as much as I do, it was a treat to wander through the silent home and try to place myself in those epochs.
Then, I was out on the street again making my way towards Setesdaltunet, a whole street containing old wooden homes built on stilts that were transported from Setesdal in Northern Norway and brought there. The snow was melting in the bright sunshine and fell in great big drops on the grounds or formed mini-stalactites around the eaves of these charming wooden structures—many of which I entered and found to be dark and sparse.
The last highlight of this museum, according to my book, is the 11th century Gol Stave Church and to get there, I had to climb a steep winding hill to gaze upon a small wooden church that was very reminiscent of the many pagodas I saw in Thailand in the ancient wats that dot the Northern highlands. The layers of the church’s exterior were densely covered with snow (at least six inches had fallen) but it was the inside that was amazing. The rear wall was covered with a faint painting of the Last Supper and in front of it was a very rustic altar—just a table basically with two candle stands. It was in this church that I saw the carved portal at the door which took me back to the magnificent specimen I had seen in the History Museum and I realized where in such a church, this sort of structure would fit. It was mind blowing and the impressions these discoveries made on me were heightened by the utter silence of the landscape that allowed me to contemplate my surroundings and seemed to spiritualize my discoveries.
The Kon-Tiki, Fram and Maritime Museums:
It was time then to board the bus (the Oslo Pass includes free rides on all modes of transport) and make my way to the tip of the peninsula to get to the Kon-Tiki Museum. I had done bit of reading and knew that the Kon-Tiki is associated with Thor Heyerdahl, one of Norway’s best known oceanographers. Indeed, Nordic sea-faring history which began with the Vikings who were aggressive sailors, explorers and adventurers, carried forward well into contemporary times in the many explorations and experiments undertaken by Heyerdahl throughout his life.
The Kon-Tiki Museum documents the two main voyages he undertook—one from Peru to the Easter Islands with a crew of six in a balsam raft he called the Kon-Tiki and another called the Ra II, a papyrus boat (as existed in ancient Egypt) that he sailed from Morocco to Barbados with a multi-racial and multi-cultural crew of eight. The museum has done such a wondrous job of educating the visitor on the planning, preparation, dangers and accomplishments of these voyages that, unbelievably, were undertaken successfully on such primitive craft as to leave on speechless. The Kon-Tiki expedition was completed in 1947 and a few years later, in 1954, the documentary film that was made on it won the Oscar Award for Best Documentary Film. Not only were we able to see the actually award-winning documentary in a marvelous setting—the inside of a cave as found on Easter Island—but, get this, we were actually able to see the Oscar that the film won! For me, a devoted cinema-buff, to finally see Oscar face-to-face and so unexpectedly, was a thrill that words cannot describe. Naturally, I had to take a picture right by the golden statue and it was for me more exciting that the news than the crew braved a 60 foot long killer whale shark that encircled the raft for hours on end before one of the crew members could stand the stress no longer and harpooned it off into the Deep! So, I went to see the Kon-Tiki and I ended up seeing a real Oscar!
My next destination was the Fram Museum, another quite wondrous structure built around the height and width of the great ship, the Fram, that had participated in so many expeditions to the South Pole including the last one by Roald Amundsen in 1910-1912. Not only could you see the great dimensions of this ship but you could actually walk upon its deck. It was similar to the experience I had walking upon the deck not inches away from where Lord Nelson had fallen on the H.M.S. Victory at Portsmouth only a few days earlier. A visit into the interior of the ship proves that shipping had improved enormously since Nelson’s time.
The small crews on these voyages had almost luxurious cabins (tiny but very well fitted out indeed) and none of the squalor that characterized life at sea for sailors who were “hard-pressed” (forced) into sea service in the 18th century. There actually was a billiards table and a piano on board that spoke of evenings of leisure and happy entertainment. It blew my mind to think that I was actually standing on a ship that had been to the farthest points in the north and south of our planet—parts of the globe on which, I know, I will never set foot. Outside, in the expanses that faced Oslo harbor, is the Gjoa, a small boat that Amundsen used when negotiating the Northwest Passage for the first time in 1912. This area also afforded some terrific views of the fjord and the port.
And then I could not resist popping into the Maritime Museum next door which is the receptacle of all of Norway’s sea-faring history. Here, another unexpected treat awaited me for visitors are led into a vast auditorium to watch a film on a multi-plex screen (five parts) similar to the experience of watching an IMAX movie. This marvelous film took us on a guided coastal visual tour of Norway with stupendous camera work from a low-flying helicopter and a boat. In and out, we wound through fjords that rose with steep cliffs facing ahead of us which reminded me so much of the real helicopter ride that Llew and I had taken on the island of Kauai in Hawaii when we had skimmed only feet above the famed Na Pali Cliffs. Though I was seated in an auditorium, I had a few nail biting moments as we swerved with the camera over these heights then dropped rapidly to the depths of the sea shore where fishing villages that scar the landscape offered a glimpse into the plain rural life of Nordic country folk. From villages to cities, we passed through Bergen and made our way to Oslo as we learned about the role she has played in global maritime life. Truly, this was one of the highlights of my trip—and it ranked almost as close as did the seeing of the Oscar Award for the first time.
Also very interesting about this museum is the painting Leif Erickson Sees America for the First Time by Christian Krogh which fills one wall. It is based on the theory that the Nordic seamen had arrived in North American long before Columbus did and is proudly displayed in this space. I was also deeply touched by a special exhibition on the Boat People of Vietnam who were rescued by Nordic sailors and brought as immigrants to Norway right after the end of the Vietnam War. A recent reunion brought these half starved and dying immigrant people together after thirty years and it was in their honor that this exhibition was held together with one of the actual boats on which they were rescued from those troubled Asian waters.
Night had fallen by the time I arrived at Haraldsheim as the tram I chose to take had to come to a standstill for almost an hour as another one ahead of it had broken down. By this time, I felt confident about finding my way back to the Youth Hostel and the darkness no longer served to unnerve me. A hot shower later, I was in bed and reading and marveling at everything I had seen.
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