Oslo Day 3

Kristin again! While we were dealing with sleet and rain down in the city centre on Day 2, the hills were getting several centimeters of snow, and the tobogganing hill finally opened for the winter, just in time for my birthday! We got up and headed to the metro, which took us out of town and up the mountain through some really spectacular views. Since it was Sunday morning and there were no commuters, literally everyone on our train was dressed for the snow and most were carrying sleds and skiis. It was neat!

Trying to be stealthy with my paparazzi shots

This is a subway station. Maybe I should move to Norway?

The first stop was the Holmenkollbakken ski jump north of the city. There has been a ski jump there (obviously rebuilt and changed over the years) since 1892, and there have been multiple Olympic and international ski jumping competitions held there. The jump is seriously massive. Here's a view from the Oslo bay:

With cruise ship for scale!

You can go right up to the platform at the top of the ski jump, and have a ridiculous view of the surrounding hillside. It was still a bit murky when we were there (a combination of fog and snow) which was too bad - on a clear day I wonder how far you can see?

Surrounding area. Interesting skyline they must have!

I honestly did not know ski jumps were this steep. It was terrifying, and I'm not even scared of heights! Bonus view of the biathalon in the stadium next to the jump, which was happening all day

You think they get some snow?

After checking out the jump we headed into the ski museum. I don't have a ton of pictures, but there was a lot of neat information about the royal family and how they took up skiing, and how much it endeared them to the people. Haakon's son and heir, Olaf, was quite a good ski jumper in his day, competing in international competitions. One day it was quite icy and slippery, and someone mentioned to the king that perhaps the prince shouldn't be competing and risking injury. Haakon said that 'if it's safe enough for these other boys, it's safe enough for my son!' A picture of Olaf in mid-jump was made into a stamp, and Olaf was apparently amused that they photoshopped his skiis which were slightly crossed, into perfect parallel form. Even the queen would head up on the weekends to ski in this area - they showed her skiis, and they were the forerunner of today's step-in bindings (used only for women and seniors back then - everyone else crouched down and buckled the bindings around their feet). The women skiied in dresses!

Next we headed up to the toboggan hill, which was something I had really been looking forward to. It's a pretty slick system - rent the sled and helmet at the top of the hill, head to the bottom (takes 10 minutes to get down - it's a long hill!) where the metro picks you up and returns you to the top of the hill! Here I am eating a stroopwafel (caramel inside a thin chewy waffle) while waiting for our ride

Here's the map at the sled rental hut. Helpful! They even let us return our sled at the bottom of the hill, saving us about 40 minutes round-trip!

And here's the countryside we were passing through. Ugly, right?

Now I've done a fair bit of tobogganing in my childhood, though not as much recently, and thought this would be like a GT snowracer - sitting upright, able to steer and brake. None of those things were true! You can either sit completely upright (which is difficult because you go slow and the bumps try and throw you off) or you can lie down on your back. You can sort-of steer by either kicking against the front of the opposite sledge, or pulling on the strap (doesn't do much), or, like most people, you just kind of point downhill and drag your feet when you need to avoid a collision.

Think I'm kidding?

Video here - if someone could speed it up and add funny music that'd be great!

The cool thing was that everyone knows how impossible these things are to steer - I saw probably 6 people head off into the ditch (some at rather high speeds!) and there were tons of minor collisions. Luckily no one batted an eye about it. The first time I bumped into the back of a sled with two young boys on it I thought the parents would get mad at me (certainly would have at home!) but instead they laughed and went on with their day. It was great! Although my back and butt were pretty sore after the runs we did - can't imagine going all day!

We walked through some pretty neighbourhoods in the afternoon, had a burrito (nothing like authentic local cuisine!) and saw some street art.

Why yes, that is the female reproductive tract on the side of that building

Cat Alley

This was a more traditional part of town - I always love multicoloured row houses!

This shattered newspaper station is a memorial to the terrorist attacks in 2011. Andrers Breivik detonated a bomb in the city centre, killing 8 and wounding hundreds. He then took assault weapons to a teen camp and opened fire. The city has kept up this stand, with the newspapers of the day in place, to remind everyone what was happening in the world and the city that morning, and how fast it changed. We had to pass through a roadblock to get here and quite honestly had forgotten about this attack, it was a sobering interlude to a beautiful afternoon.

As the sun set, we headed to Frogner Park. This has the world's largest park of sculptures from a single artist, Gustav Vigeland. I heard that these sculptures were originally meant to go in front of the Stortinget (Parliament) but for reasons that will soon become very clear, they were put elsewhere. I think Vigeland and H.R Giger (the creator of the xenomorph in Alien, amongst a lot of disturbing surrealist biomechanical stuff which gives me the willies, no matter how much I adore the Aliens franchise) would have been very good friends, had they been around at the same time. Vigeland was a very talented sculptor, I must say, but his subject matter was just weird and off-putting to me. He was widely known to be a Nazi sympathizer during the Norweigian occupation, and better art critics than I have gone into detail about fascist themes in his art. Interestingly, he also designed the Nobel Peace Prize.

The Monolith - 46 feet tall, over 120 individual human sculptures carved from a single piece of granite, with other sculptures surrounding it, depicting the 'circle of life'. Isn't it pretty from here?

One of the less weird sculptures

You can get a bit more idea of the detail in this shot

And one of the weirder sculptures. In case it's not clear, the children are using a braid of her hair as a bridle

One of the most popular (or at least most-photographed) statues is a man being attacked by 4 babies (or 'genii') - I am not sure why. I do think the light was interesting because the silhouetting lets you ignore the nudity of all of these statues (same as in Malmo, probably not as big a deal in Scandanavian countries as it would be at home)

Angry Boy, another of the most popular sculptures

The next three I genuinely liked, although again I think the silhouette and the beautiful sunset had as much to do with that as the sculptures themselves

Our heads spinning from weirdness and 'art', we made our way through this ornate gate and caught the tram back for dinner and bedtime. One more day in Oslo to go!

What do you think about the Vigeland sculptures? I'm interested in hearing other's thoughts. As a reminder, the comments function on this blog is screwy. You need to refresh the page (hit Ctrl + F5 on Windows or Command + Option + R on Mac) before it will let you send us a message.