Culture snub

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With less than a week to go, time to cram in the various cultural offerings of Oslo is rapidly running out. I’ve been waiting for a nice day (well, perhaps more accurately a non-dismal day) to visit the Folkemuseum – the world’s oldest open air museum. This wait has been quite a long one. We had some nice weather here in May and early June, and apparently there was a nice week while I was away, but other than that this has been the summer that never came. I have been hailed on twice and possibly snowed upon in the last month! Drizzly grey days of 14 degrees have been the norm. It’s been rubbish. But today saw Oslo blessed with at least a few hours of sunshine, so off I went by ferry over to the Bygdøy peninsula to see the old buildings and “culture” of the Folkemuseum.

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If you, dear reader, find yourself en route to the Folkemuseum there are several things you could do. You could proceed to the museum, take in the sights, enrich your awareness of Norwegian culture and history and have a smashing day wandering around in the sunshine. Alternatively you could stumble around, wonder where the actual culture is, and gorge yourself on boiled sweets. Or you could get back on the ferry and go right back to whence you came. Now I love morose cows and small wooden buildings with grass on their roofs as much as anyone, but I’d have to advocate the latter option every time. This is one crappy excuse for a museum. I just couldn’t get into it. It was like a low-rent version of what “Sovereign Hill” would be like if they’d never found gold in Ballarat. Poor. In fact it was so poor that it nearly put me off bothering with the second museum I’d planned for the day, the nearby “Fram” museum. Luckily I did put in an appearance as I got to see the "Fram" itself - the actual ship that has sailed further north AND further south than any other vessel. Impressive. After that, with heavy clouds predictably gathering, I decided to put in one last visit to my favourite Norwegian cultural institution : the Nasjonalgalleriet.

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Norway’s national gallery is ace. I’ve been there before, a few years ago, but it is worth a second look. They have, predictably enough, a great collection of Norwegian art. The Munch room is great, and fantastically it appears that the authorities have now managed to avoid having “The Scream” stolen for at least 6 consecutive days now, so I caught another glimpse of that. There are some other great works their too from a range of artists, and the many landscape meant more to me now than when I saw them in my first weeks in Oslo back in 2006. Time spent there is spent so much better than wandering around some frankly dull old buildings. And with that I conclude my tourismy type activities in this city. Now I just have to start packing up all this junk I've collected over these past few years...

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