Urban Oslo
It has a walkable central core, whose dignified architecture is mostly late 19th and early 20th century, and a bevy of attractions, from authentic Viking ships to a renowned sculpture park to the building where the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded annually.
After you’ve done decorous, try indecorous. In the 18th century, the area of Tjuvholmen, “islet of thieves,” was a gathering place for robbers, prostitutes and other unsavory characters. Today, it’s the city’s hippest hood. As a result of thoughtful development, Tjuvholmen’s once-derelict buildings have been transformed into million-dollar lofts, high-end boutiques, gourmet restaurants and jazz clubs.
Laced by a mosaic of canals, Tjuvholmen somehow manages to be both bustling and serene. At one end of the reconfigured waterfront is the city’s iconic opera house; at the other is the glass and wood Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art. Just steps from the museum, is an art-filled boutique hotel, the Thief, a tribute to the area’s former notoriety.
Away from Tjuvholmen, Frogner Park is the world’s largest sculpture park dedicated to the work of a single artist, Gustav Vigeland. Although it has 212 sculptures in bronze, granite and iron, the park’s centerpiece is the 60-foot-tall monolith featuring, on one colossal piece of stone, 121 intertwined human figures engaged in various activities from making love to waging war.
The sculpture, which depicts the cycle of life, took 14 years to complete and, because of the subject matter, was controversial when it was unveiled.
For those who love watercraft of all kinds, a boat trip to Bygdoy Peninsula is a must. Not only will you get the best view of Oslo from the water but the peninsula has two museums that chronicle the lure of the sea from Viking days to the mid-20th century.
At the Viking Ship Museum, part of the University of Oslo’s Museum of Cultural History, visitors admire the graceful contours of two ninth-century ships and see a re-creation of a Viking burial chamber.
Not far from the Viking Museum is the Kon-Tiki Museum, which houses the frighteningly fragile raft that in 1947, took Norwegian adventurer and ethnographer Thor Heyerdahl on a 100-day, 5,000-mile voyage from the western coast of South America to the Tuamoto Islands in Polynesia.
If you’re more into skiing than sailing, a short drive will take you to the world’s most modern ski jump, at least in its current incarnation. Reopened on its present site in 2010, Holmenkollen, Norway’s most-visited attraction, looms 200 feet above the landscape like a shimmering silver snake, courtesy of 100 tons of steel.
High Jumps at Holmenkollen
Although the current ski jump is the epitome of 21st-century technology, skiing at Holmenkollen dates back to 1892, when the first ski-jumping competition took place. Inside the base of the jump is the informative Ski Museum, which offers a look at the sport’s history and Norway’s hosting of two Winter Olympics: Oslo in 1952 and Lillehammer in 1994.
Back in the city, head to the hills above Oslo Fjord for a stroll through Ekeburgparken, where a new sculpture trail wends through a magnificent spruce forest. The park’s pieces range from Salvador Dali’s “Venus de Milo With Drawers” to Louise Bourgeois’ “The Couple.”
Afterward, there’s no better place to enjoy a leisurely meal than the Art Deco Ekeberg Restaurant. Floor-to-ceiling glass windows give you a front row seat for whatever Mother Nature has on tap. If she is in a good mood, you’ll get a sunset flaring with red and orange tongues of fire. If she’s not, brace yourself for silver sheets of rain lashing the blue-black fjord.
Whatever you get, it’s likely to be one of your abiding memories of this beautiful country.
Visit Norway
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