Oslo, Norway: January 26 - 27, 2025

Edvard Munch's "The Scream"

We are in Norway for a Hurtigruten coastal cruise to the North Cape which will begin tomorrow. All our flights were painless and on time despite Finnair canceling our flight from Dallas to Helsinki the day before we were to fly. Before we had time to panic, we received a subsequent email from Finnair putting us on an American Airlines flight which took us first to London and then to Oslo. It was a much better flight with less time on the ground. That flight change allowed us to arrive in Oslo earlier and we were able to get to the Munch Museum, the number one place I wanted to visit, during our short time in Oslo. The Munch Museum was just a short walk from our hotel and while there were substantial sheets of ice on the sidewalks, the sun was out and it was a beautiful day.

Edvard Munch (1863-1944) was a prolific artist. After Germans invaded Norway in 1940, Edvard Munch bequeathed all his unsold work to the Municipality of Oslo. The Munch Museum has three versions of The Scream: a lithograph dated 1895 (shown above), a (approximately1910) tempera and oil paint (shown below) version, and an 1893 pastel crayon version. The three versions are in a special, darkened, and guarded room at the museum. Each one is visible for just 30 minutes at a time in order to preserve its life. We did not linger long enough to see the third version.

The Scream (oil/tempera) about 1910

According to information at the Museum, "in his diary, Munch described how while strolling with friends in 1891 as the sun was setting over the Oslo fjord, he suddenly stopped quaking with fear, and felt 'a vast infinite scream passing through nature'." In his Scream, the scream isn't coming from the subject but from Nature itself.

As a child he was often sick, near death more than once, and his mother died when he was just five years old. No need to wonder why several of his works are titled Angst, Despair, Alone, Jealousy, and Anxiety. British artist Louise Bourgeois felt that Munch's emotional state was due to the loss of his mother so she made a mother for him. A large sculpture known as Munch's Mother, sits protectively next to the museum.

The museum has a really great article about The Scream in popular culture at: https://www.munchmuseet.no/en/our-collection/a-scream-through-culture/.

From the Museum we went on to explore more of Olso Harbor.

1. She Lies, by artist Monica Bonvicini, a floating sculpture that moves with the tide and wind and asks how much the climate needs to warm before an iceberg ends up in Oslo Fjord.

2. There are several floating saunas tied up in the Harbor. First sweat in the sauna and then jump into the fjord.

3. Quite a bit of building going on behind the museum allowing for interesting reflections.

4. A walkway to an residential area.

5. The beautiful Oslo Opera House. It's an ideal place to watch the sun as it sets and lights up the glass of the Opera.

The next day we woke to very gray weather and the temperature had plunged. Our Hurtigruten tour/cruise began with a bus tour of parts of Oslo. In the bus we were driven past quite a few sights (why I dislike bus tours) but stopped only at the long jump and the Fram Museum. Both were interesting.

The Holmenkollen Ski Jump is the only steel ski jump in the world and it has permanent wind protection as an integrated part of the inrun (jumping ramp) construction. It opened in 2010. The jumping ramp (inrun) is 96.95 m in length. The steepest point at 36 m and the height at take off is 3 m. The jumper's target (K point) of the downhill slope is 120 m from the take off point. More points are awarded for landing farther or deducted for less than 120 m. Spectator seating is on both sides of the ski jump.

We had a very short visit to the Fram Museum. After our guide quickly disgorged names, facts, and dates, we had a few more minutes to wander. I did a walk through of Fram. "The Fram was the first ship specially built in Norway for polar research. She was used on three important expeditions: with Fridtjof Nansen on a drift over the Arctic Ocean 1893-96, with Otto Sverdrup to the arctic archipelago west of Greenland - now the Nunavut region of Canada - 1898-1902, and with Roald Amundsen to Antarctica for his South Pole expedition 1910-12." The museum is an amazing place with great stories of heart-pounding adventures. It is definitely worth spending more than 20 minutes inside. The museum website has a virtual tour of the ship.

Outside the Fram Museum is a sculpture of the five explorers who were the first to reach the South Pole: Roald Amundsen, Helmer Hanssen, Oscar Wisting, Olav Bjaaland and Sverre Hassel.

Late afternoon the bus dropped us at Oslo Harbor where our ship, the Trollfjord, was docked. We departed Oslo Fjord at 6:00 pm.; it was dark and snowing.

Next stop: Kristiansand at 8:00am January 28, 2025.

Particulars: Clarion Hotel The Hub - comfortable pre-cruise lodging paid for by Hurtigruten.

We took the train from the airport to Oslo Central Station. Note that there is no "c" in Norwegian so that would be Sentral Station. The train ride took 10 or 20 minutes. It is very fast, inexpensive, and comfortable and even had Wifi. Norwegians also speak English and are very helpful to tourists who only speak English. Arriving at the Sentral Station we did not exit the correct door so squirreled around for a while with our luggage until we found our hotel which was just a few meters from the Oslo Sentral Station.