Going our own way: Norway: Oslo museums

We started out the morning with a breakfast of champions: a hot dog wrapped in bacon. Mark had spotted them yesterday and wanted to try it. It was quite good.

We had some time to kill between buying our Oslo passes (that get you into all the museums for one price) and when the museums opened. So we wandered the city.

And Mark found a geocache.

The Edvard Munch museum opened at 10 am, so of course we were there by 9:45 waiting for the doors to open.

I think it might be fate that the Munch/Van Gogh exhibit started on my birthday. Two of my faves.

Unfortunately photos were not allowed in the whole museum. But I had to sneak one of this one because I had beer seen it before and it struck a chord with me. It is titled "Two Human Beings. The Lonely Ones." It's a woodblock print. I think Munch mastered the woodblock print.

I also snuck this blurry one of the kiss. I've always loved this one and was thrilled to see it in person.

The exhibit was incredible. I had to walk through it twice while Mark waited in the lobby. It displayed pieces my Munch and Van Gogh side by side and pointed out the similarities, but also differences between these two influential artists. Magnificent.

Here's a quote I copied down that I thought summed up the exhibit white well:

"Both artists simplified, reduced, intensified and exaggerated pictorial effects in order to convey the essential aspect of a subject and to heighten its expressive impact. Color, line, space and brushwork took on new meanings in their work"

I could go on and on. But I won't. I will mention that the exhibit ended with the crayon version of The Scream. A lesser known one, but still amazing (he did some four or five different versions all in different mediums).

Next, we visited the National Gallery of Oslo, where THE The Scream is on display.

You could take pictures in the whole museum except one room. Of course that room is where they keep all I the Munch paintings. Including The Scream. That didn't stop me from sneaking a shot.

Or having Mark sneak one of me with it.

There were a few other gems throughout the gallery, including this portrait by El Greco.

Ten we were on our way to the harbor to catch a ferry to the next museum.

We stopped in a few shops. When we stepped into this one I thought it was Christmas.

We passed city hall on our way to the harbor.

We boarded a ferry and it took us to the Folk Museum. It had a few exhibits.

But was mostly an open air museum with old buildings from around Norway.

I loved the detail on the Stave church.

Mark with the pigs in the farm section:

It covered a large time-span.

Some of the buildings you could go inside and see various furnishings.

I thought Leo might like a dollhouse like this to live in:

Next up was the Kon Tiki museum. Mark and I had watched the movie about their attempt to sail across the Pacific Ocean on this raft a while back, so it was cool to see the real thing.

Next door to that was the Fram museum, which contains the Fram boat. This boat was the first boat to reach the most northern and southern points as part of two polar expeditions.

We took the ferry back towards the city and stopped for a quick visit in the Ibsen museum.

Then saw the palace.

And then Vigeland Park, which is basically a sculpture park of Gustav Vigeland's work. It was pretty epic.

The pictures really fall short at showing how cool these sculptures are. All of his sculptures seem to involve the human form. This one seemed to me to be like a giant sundial, with a tower of human figures the was surrounded by 12 groups of figures.