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Norway is far more mountainous than the rest of Scandinavia. (Would you believe that the highest hill in Denmark is less than four hundred feet? Not even meters; feet!)
The Norwegian Countryside
Hank Shiffman2003-11-26 21:01:16
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their little surprises, although none quite so surreal as this videogame store off the main drag. What's the connection to Spiderman, I wondered? And why does he have the ears and body of a cartoon mouse?
Two examples of Oslo architecture rehabilitated for new purposes. The building on the left once housed a resident evil: it was local Gestapo headquarters during the occupation. (One hopes it's been fumigated.) The one on the right is part of a series of warehouses in the downtown harbor district that have been turned into a shopping complex. This particular structure is an Imax theatre, surely among the more striking one might find. There can't be many Imax theatres made of brick. Straw or sticks, certainly. But hardly ever brick.
Oslo is a great center for the arts, both lively and more tactile. On the left is the national theatre, which celebrated its centennial just a couple of days before I arrived. I found the sculptures that surround the theatre awfully fanciful for a place that's so closely associated with Henrik Ibsen. (Ibsen was many things. But fanciful was not among them.) On the right is the Vigeland Sculpture Park, reputed to be the largest exhibit space for a single artist's work in the world. In addition to creating all the sculpture in the park, Gustav Vigeland designed the setting where his works would stand. All of Vigeland's sculptures are nude. Vigeland claimed that his nude sculptures would not seem dated the way clothed figures would. (Personally, I think he just liked doing nudes.) The centerpiece of the park is this plateau with the monolith at its center. The single block of granite contains 121 individual figures, all supporting each other without conflict. (By the way, the tilt is in my camera, not the sculpture. Damn rangefinders!)
Norwegians seem somewhat defensive of their Viking ancestors, trying hard to rescue their image from the damage done by popular entertainment. "Sure they raped and burned and pillaged," they will explain. "But not nearly as often as you think. And always in that order, which should account for something!" Kidding aside, the harshness of their climate and need for farmland led Norwegians to explore far and wide. Three examples were presented to us one afternoon in the form of three special museums. The first had on display three Viking ships that were unearthed from giant burial plots. (Contrary to Hollywood, Vikings didn't send off their dead in burning ships. They buried them. Of course, they buried their possessions along with them, including the odd servant. Talk about tough management contracts!) The ship at left was a sort of royal barge and was buried around the year 900. Museum number two was devoted to modern day Viking Thor Heyerdahl and his expeditions across the Pacific Ocean in the balsa wood Kon-Tiki and the Atlantic in the papyrus Ra and Ra II. That's the Ra II on the right; the failure to include a single rope on the tail of the Ra that appeared in the ancient Egyptian plans led to its collapse near the end of its journey. Hence the construction and journey of the Ra II. Museum number three houses the Fram, the ship Fridtjof Nansen used in his attempts to reach the North Pole and which was later used to explore Antarctica. It's clear that Norwegians will go to great lengths to be somewhere else!
See photographs from:
Norway Gallery
Thanks for sharing
How may one find out which provence Honefoss is located?
Thanks
Jim Hanson, 2006-04-14 01:45:09