Norway Second Impressions

I’m sure my word-count drop off dramatically soon, but new places are so full of new experiences, and I’m going to run with it!

Here’s the TLDR:

• It’s super green right near the city of Oslo. like, cows grazing in fresh meadows green.
• the folk museum is an awesome take presentation of how norwegians live and have lived
• H got sick some more
• I rode a scooter
• people are funny, and that’s just as true in Norway

A walk in the woods

We walked this morning, past park after park, over a pedestrian highway crossing, on rocky coastal trails and through fairytale woodlands to the Folkemuseum. There were photographers shooting local fashion among the reeds and rushes. In the woods, a young girl with a staff chased an overweight old gnome (at full adult height) past a video crew, playing in what must be a painfully wholesome children’s television show.

We are in Oslo, on the waterfront, within line of sight of a massive cruise ship, and we walked in long wild meadows, past cows and birds and birds and birds. There is so much growing here, and I am deeply enamored with it.

Nasjonal Folkemuseet

The national folk museum is a massive testament to the hard work and ingenuity of the Norwegian people, and to their efforts at keeping their history alive. Though I think we’re here a bit early in the season to get the full immersive experience, we saw many remarkable things.

The oldest known knitwear in Norway was knit from silk and silver, as a fancy evening shirt for a wealthy individual in the 1600s. The stave church on the museum campus is beautiful in its ornamentation, and bold in its architecture and construction. It’s pretty unnerving to stand under the tree-trunk-sized posts that support the upper stories. They begin 40 feet above your head, on little buttress things much smaller than they are.

Most of the museum is focused on how people live, and have lived, in Norway throughout history. They have a ton of amazing homes and outbuildings, organized by region and time, and where possible arranged as they would have been in use. They made a fully hands-on replica of their earliest one-room house, too, so you can go inside and imagine yourself in the place.

I spent way too much time in there playing with a handmade wooden bucket with a locking lid. Really ingenious, though!

I geeked out a bunch about stove things I’d never seen before, too.

• a cast-iron laundry stove with built-in cauldron
• smoke ovens, which were early in-home wood stoves without stove-pipes
• etasjeovns: super gorgous, and apparently great at keeping heat in your room, instead of out your chimney

Trouble in paradise

As dinner time came around, H ran out of energy. The stomach bug came back on line, so we canceled our reservations at Sentralet and went early to bed, at the HI Youth Hostel Haraldsheim. More expensive than our pensjonat, way outside the city center, with poor wifi, fold-down bunks, etc., I wasn’t super impressed. The showers were hot, though, and Heidi got a chance to nap while I picked up some veg sushi.

(And, editing this from the future, the included breakfast buffet was great.)

Death Scootin for Sushi

Oslo’s got a great transit system, but even the most accessible transit can still be a bit overwhelming. So I thought I’d walk. And then I thought, “the restaurant is 30 minutes from here and it looks like rain. Maybe I should scoot.” So like four hours later after sending my social security card and father-in-law’s credit card number to some scooter rental company on the internet, I found myself in the driver’s… stand.

If you haven’t driven one of these things, they’re exactly what you’d expect and more. The tight turning radius of a razor scooter, coupled to a rather zippy electric motor. Navigating a new city on one while using google maps directions is tricky. Doing so with a bag full of sushi is definitely hard mode.

TLDR

• the sushi made it back to the hostel in one piece
• Norwegian takeout bags are made from paper, and come equipped standard with high-functioning handles.
• Rental scooters are basically electric danger-machines

Google maps rating inflation

Restaurant ratings here in Norway are very high. Not that all of the restaurants are great, just that everyone on google maps seems to rank things in the in 3.9 -> 4.5 range. I’ve been wondering if this is a more-polite culture thing. Regardless of the cause, it makes maps a less useful resource for restaurants here.

Norwegians are funny too

Coffee party

One of the Folkemuseum houses, apparently, was a party house. Like, the people who owned the log cabin next door only used this house for entertaining. For the coffee-minded out there, this is the coffee grinder from the party house.

And for the party-minded, here are the party house (with party animal), and some kind of weird historical party-stick.

Poop crew

please tell me this isn’t some new reality tv show.

Binoculars

Ha! Museums can be funny too!

Murica

Finally, this representation of America from the 1600s is just so epic. Armadillo riders, forward!