OSLO, Norway Tues. July 16

            Our day in Oslo started badly. Today we had a tour booked with Viator, as we had in Dublin and Istanbul. In both those places there was someone waiting outside the Security Area holding a sign with names on it. No one here. We looked in vain for a person with a sign. Anybody holding a sign. Nothing.

            Bruce consulted his paper again and found we were to meet at Wharf 3. We set out and found a building marked ‘3’. Again – nobody looking for anyone. We passed the “Hop on Hop off” Oslo Red buses, and two picturesque little trains looking for customers to take around Oslo site seeing, but nothing that looked as if it was for us.

            Bruce went off seeking some sign of our tour, and left me scanning everything in sight in front of the little building labeled ‘3’. Around me was a large paved waterfront area with no vehicles. A pedestrians only ‘square’. After what seemed a long time Bruce turned up again to say he’d found out what happened.

            The ‘Wharf 3’ referred to was way at the other end of paved area and he’d found a Tourist Information Centre which was the one we should have been at. The tour we were booked on was a ‘Bus Tour’ of Oslo, which had left at 10.30 without us. The Assistant had our information and accepted Bruce’s Voucher – and some more money – to book us on an afternoon Tour of Oslo leaving at 12.45.

            I found this quite unsatisfactory, given our previous experience of our Viator bookings.  The ship had not docked till after 10am. We had taken our turn to disembark, and wasted time looking for a person with a sign and then the ‘Number 3’. There was no way we could have been on a Bus Tour taking off at 10.30 even if we had known where.

            Anyway, it turned out well in the end. We calmed down together and decided to go for a walk to fill in the time. We strolled along – this time me in the Singapore wheelchair and Bruce pushing. We had only expected to have to use the wheelchair as far as our pick-up and other short distances, so I felt anxious about Bruce pushing me too far. I am no fairy-lite burden. Fortunately it was mostly flat.

            We walked down past the Town Hall opposite that large paved area, and were surprised at the statues in a long row outside it. They were all of working men. Tradesmen with tools.  Carpenter. Bricklayer. A sweaty steel worker. And others.

I said to Bruce – “Are you sure this is the Town Hall, and not the Trade Union Headquarters?”

“Yes,” he said. They told him this was the Town Hall and we had to catch the Tourist Bus near it.

When we turned the corner we came to six standing framed pictures by Edvard Munch. I didn’t recognize any of them, but I thought one would be ‘The Scream” as that was what I associated with the name ‘Edvard Munch’. Though I’d have to admit I didn’t really recall he was Norwegian, but probably thought from Scandinavia somewhere.

We passed very few people walking around, and those we did pass we suspected may have been from the ship. The doors to shops and office blocks all seemed closed, though there did seem to be lights inside. The next corner we turned we saw MacDonalds’ yellow arches up the street, and this made us feel a little bit more secure. But MacDonalds’ door was also closed – with lights on inside. We were  puzzled - until a man walked up to the doors and they automatically folded away before him.

We followed him in while they were open. Inside, we watched people confidently walk up to the folding doors from inside and outside, just expecting them to move out of the way.  We thought that may have been to do with keeping out the winter cold, and just maybe that was why the other shops all ‘looked’ closed.

Time was moving on, so we had coffee there and sat watching the comings and goings until it was time to find the bus stop for the afternoon tour. By now the clouds were darker and there were rain drops. Not heavy – just big, cold and intermittent. There were lots of tour buses behind the Town Hall, but none with the name of our tour company on the side. Eventually our bus came along and we were welcomed by a young woman who was surprised we hadn’t been met at the ship in the morning.

From there the day improved. We had an interesting drive around the city and along the foreshore out to The Viking Ship Museum. Everywhere the foreshores were crammed with yachts, two and three deep. They must be worth millions of dollars, sitting there. We went out past the Royal herd of dairy cows in very green pastures and the Summer Royal Residence. The guide told us everything was so green because of several very good summers with lots of rain. The ship told us to expect a High of 20°C. We found it cold, especially when it began to rain. Later our competent young lady guide told us it was a lovely summer day. She also told us about people swimming in the sea half an hour drive from town. We couldn’t imagine it. Then – we are not Norwegian.

 We joined lots of buses and throngs of people at the Viking Museum. Inside were three Viking long ships unearthed within the last hundred years from the mud near the Oslo Fjord. The mud had largely preserved them since 800-900AD when they had been used as ceremonial Burial chambers.

The best preserved and repaired of the three housed the bones of two women – still there as part of the display. Well – I think the real bones had been given re-burial and the ones on display were copies. The skeletons were incomplete because the grave had been disturbed within a few years of the burial. The bones had been scattered and artifacts removed. One woman was said to be in her early 50s, and the good condition of her teeth showed she had probably had a privileged life. The other was probably in her 70s. She was old, her bones showed arthritis and she probably had trouble moving around and turning her head.

The interpretation is that these two women were probably a royal person and her servant. Though there was not enough evidence to know which was which. Both the other graves contained the remains of one man – probably an important person. The artifacts from all three ships were displayed in one area and were surprisingly preserved. There were a pair of soft leather shoes from one man. They looked comfortable, and were smallish, so this man was not the big Viking  we might imagine. I did not have time to read the conjectured information about age etc of these two men.

From here we went on to the Museum of Arctic Exloration, which seemed to have been built around the complete ship “Fram” towering above us to the ceiling. ‘The Fram’ was the ship in which the Arctic Explorer Fridtjof Nansen had spent three years locked in the Arctic Icecap to prove that the Arctic currents moved the ice right around the North Pole. Nansen was an explorer who was also a scientist, politician and Nobel Prize Winner for his work with refugees after the First World War. He is a man of whom the Norwegians are very proud.  

The three years in the ice of the men and dogs on the Fram were well documented. There were actual photos with commentary in lit displays all around the walls. Their life aboard for the three years was detailed, and there was a model of the Fram in the ice, and a diorama of a very big Polar bear and other animals. One of the photos was of a bear attacking the crew on the ice, before Nansen emptied a shotgun into its head to rescue them.

There was a small section about Amunsden and Scott and expeditions to the South Pole, but the whole museum was really of ‘The Fram’ and Nansen. It was possible to go up and onto the deck of ‘The Fram’ and down into the cabins and living quarters in which these men spent their three years in the Polar Ice Cap.

We did not have time to visit the Kon-Tiki Museum of Thor Heyerdahl’s journey on the raft of balsa logs from Peru to Polynesia in 1947. Or the Museum of Norway’s Sea exploits.

The last museum we visited was the Munch Museum which was a special exhibition of Edvard Munch’s paintings for the 150^th Anniversary of Munch’s birth. We arrived just in time to pick up an English language commentary, and that was just so satisfying. ‘The Scream’ was just in among the paintings of its period, was smaller than lots of others, and not given any priority. Security was very high as ‘The Scream’ was stolen from its frame six years ago, and found in the back of an abandonned vehicle several years later, rolled up, with no indication of where it had been, or who had stolen it.

I learned there are four paintings of ‘The Scream’ painted with slight variations at different times of Munch’s life. One of them has been in a private collection for most of its life and was sold to another private collector in New York recently for US$1.3million. The previous owner was raising money to establish a museum in a house where Munch lived in Oslo. The story of ‘The Scream’ given by Munch was that it was about a great feeling of anxiety he had one evening out walking with friends. I can believe that. The picture conveys deep anxiety.  And I discovered that Munch, the artist, had suffered from anxiety much of his life.

Our route back to the ship took us past the extraordinary new Opera House – all in dazzling white.  Carrera marble from Italy was brought and the design is meant to convey the ice and snow of Norway.  It certainly does.

My last expedition of the day was into the Cruise Terminal shops of Norwegian products and souvenirs. I liked the warm woolens on display and was tempted to buy – though they are not for Sydney winters. Sydney’s winter temperature today is higher than Oslo’s “lovely summer day.”