Norway José

The Baguette Winner and I paid a long weekend visit to Oslo, which is in Norway, which you knew, but secretly you weren’t certain that it wasn’t Finland.

Oslo has an opera house. It’s called the Oslo Opera House. It’s good.

(spoon-tamago.com)

With countless hours of semi-professional architecture admiration in my past, I can tell you that this is pretty solid architecting. Norway held an architecture competition to find the best design. At first, I was a little grumpy that my entry was not considered:

In the end, I think they chose well. The final construction came in US$52 million under budget, because this is Scandinavia, and your money is no good here.

One good think about the Oslo Opera House (aside from the fact that it looks like an alien spacecraft rising out of the ocean) is you can walk on it. It would also be a good surface to roll a watermelon down. If I go there again, I’ll take my Matchbox cars so that I can race the Corvette one vs the London bus one. The London bus one would probably win because it is heavier, but also sometimes it can tip over. The Corvette has doors that can open.

Oslo is a good city, partly because it is on the ocean. Most of the good cities are on the ocean, although some other good cities are not on the ocean. If your city is not on the ocean, it’d better have a river because where are we going to do bombs? Anyway, Oslo’s got a nice waterfront:

Oslo also has mountains, which is good because it snows a lot. Since it snows so much, the Norwegians like to do lots of silly snow sports. For instance, they love a bit of cross country skiing. This is just like cross country running, but with skis and a lot more Lycra. They love this so much that they do it in the summer, on roller blades:

Image from coolthings.com, ironically.

It’s a silly pastime, and we are duty-bound to laugh at these people.

They also love a bit of ski-flying, which is way cooler (although still totally weird). For those that don’t believe me, watch:

You can see Oslo’s massive ski jump from pretty much anywhere in the city. In fact, it was built as a monument to the country’s celebrated whaling culture. Whale fishermen (mammalmen?), when they arrived at dock, would point out the giant whale tail to their dying quarry, taunting them in their death throes. Come winter, it was discovered that the huge construction worked nicely as a ski jump, and thus ski flying was born (and the whaling continued).

It’s a big jump. I never dropped in on the vert at the Kilbirnie Rec Centre, but I sat on top of it. I reckon this jump is at least four times higher than the vert. Lucky for them it was summer, so I couldn’t give it a go. Their records are safe, for now.

As an aside, the jump would also be a good slope to roll a watermelon down. In fact, many types of melon would roll nicely down the ramp, as would a grapefruit.


We did not eat out a lot in Oslo, as we were staying with friends. Some quick observations:
- Coffee wasn’t bad;
- Bakeries were good. They love variations on the cinnamon bun. This seemed to be the main food item of note;
- Everything is expensive;
- Beer is more expensive;
- Wine is most expensive;
- You can eat whale. I didn’t, but you could. They have signs outside restaurants that say “WE SELL WHALE”; they’re not even hiding it. It’s like the Rainbow Warrior died for nothing.

On our last day in Oslo, Tom, one of our gracious hosts, offered “shall we go to the penis park?” It’s rare, these days, that one receives a truly unique proposition. And so, to the penis park we went!

The “penis park” is actually Frogner Park, ‘sometimes incorrectly referred to as the “Vigeland (Sculpure) Park”’ (Wikipedia), ‘incorrectly’, because “penis park” is a far more appropriate title. But it’s not just penises here. All the bits get their time in the sun.

As a city or, hell, a nation, your choice in statues says a lot.

That man there is King Dick, and you will bloody well respect him. He died at sea, which is a manly place to die. But it wasn’t the sea that claimed him. It was “a massive heart attack” (Wikipedia again, obviously), which, like gout, is a kingly affliction. He stands atop a plinth (I reckon), with a finger raised to the sky to say “we’re number one!” That’s probably not the best statue in Wellington, which is amazing, really.

The most famous statue in Oslo is this kid:

They freaking love this kid. He’s on all the postcards. He’s part of the Vigeland Installation in Frogner Park, and he’s one of the more “normal” statues you’ll find there (“normal” in the sense that Europeans love a depiction of a chubby little naked kid). I can see why they like the little jerk, though. He perfectly sums up that moment in every Norwegian’s childhood, where it’s dinner time and Mum has cooked bloody whale again! We’re always eating whale! CAN’T WE HAVE SOMETHING INTERESTING LIKE SEA HORSE OR BENGAL FUCKING TIGER?! Nope, it’s whale for every meal, like Chårlie Bucketssøn.

As I mentioned earlier: the bits. Tom said that he calls it the “penis park” because, although all of the statues are naked, the men have penises and the women are all smooth (and devastatingly lacking in detail). The reason for this discrepancy has been lost to the sands of time, but the best guess is that Mr Vigeland was raised by wolves, and had never actually seen a woman nude. How did he know about boobs, you ask. Big Kate Winslett fan.

The best thing to do, at this stage, is just to share a few snaps of the statues, and we can all imagine hilarious captions.

These kooky (and impeccably sculpted) figures stand guard over the centerpiece of the whole park: the monolith.

(Wikipedia)

This is most likely an enormous stone celebration of the Catalan tradition of building human towers. For more information, watch this video:

Another theory is that these people are intertwined in their quest to reach the heavens (or enlightenment, because Norway is heaps-not-religious). I say “theory”, because very little is known about Gustav Vigeland. We do know the following: he was Norwegian (definitely true); he designed the Nobel Peace Prize medal (also definitely true); raised by wolves, as mentioned earlier (highly likely); danced with said wolves (probably what the film was based on).

The monolith is really good, in a creepy way. It’s meant to illustrate the desire to reach the divine, but I sort of thought it looked more like a bunch of people trying to climb out of hell. All the twisting of limbs and squashing together looks wildly uncomfortable. But, as I’ve written before, art is all about looking at it and making impressed noises, and people were doing that. So this is definitely solid art.

There’s also an excellent fountain:

It’s a great park, with lots of beautiful, insane sculptures. If you have a couple of classes of Year 10 boys, take them to Frogner. They’ll be entertained for hours.

In summing up, that was Oslo. It was very much like Wellington, although without the Cricket Museum. And with heaps more genitals.