Say that ten times fast!
We had an awesome day! The weather was absolutely, perfectly summer/fall: sunny, cool 70s, wind that ruffles the leaves and invigorates the soul. Despite sketchy sleep and dreams of John pulling hundreds of leeches off of my legs, we got a fairly early start, finding our discount breakfast place after a few turn arounds. The buffet consists of coffee, tea, bread and cracker-bread for open faced sandwiches called smorbrod, fixin's of tuna salad, tomatoes, cucumbers, hard boiled egg slices, salami, ham slices, brown goat cheese, cow cheese, jams, butter, the whole Norwegian smorgasbord. We lounged over our meal and then headed down to catch the Bygdoy ferry to see some museums.
We started with the Norsk Folkemuseum, a massive (155 houses), open-air, working museum celebrating Norwegian and Sami culture and folk customs including music, dance, baking, crafts, farming and domestic animals; we saw two horses and a mama and baby cow, and we could hear goats in the distance. Every structure has a green roof, and the farm houses, store houses, stables, privies and elevated sleeping lofts were all beautifully hand built and smelled of divine woodiness. The original Gol stave church from 1200 was incredible, we fell in love with it. It smelled deeply woodsy and maybe hints of incense still present in its pores. It was huge on the outside, having cavernous innards that were covered in detailed carvings of dragons, serpents, what looked to me like eagle heads and an interesting figure that I would guess is no Christian symbol. There were other human totems carved near the altar space, each with dragons eating their way down the pillars. We were fascinated and enchanted walking in that place! They do an amazing job of keeping the place running, it seemed like it would be a neat job to have. I kept remarking that it would be cool if our hometown Renaissance Festival could be more like that, more of a historically accurate picture of life, and a year-round, real-time working Renaissance town.
We snacked at the folk museum, enjoying the calm breeze and shade beneath charming trees, then headed off to the Vikingskiphuset, or Viking Ship Museum. That is some incredible ship building, I must say. Massive doesn't even describe these boats, and the thought of dudes like Erik the Red spring frightfully to mind as we stood in their presence. I wondered how many dozens of men it would have taken to even maneuver the boats. The intricate sea serpent carvings were amazing, and one ship had elaborately painted dragons, as well. The artifacts found on these boats, which were also used as burial vessels, we're astoundingly beautiful. I am hoping to get loads of pictures up, but without the proper cords with us, this will have to wait until we return home.
Back on the ferry to zip over to the Akershus Festning (fortress) and the Norges Hjemmefrontmuseum (Norway Resistance Museum) for stunning and sobering journeys through military time. The fortress is still an active military post, so there are still formal guards marching around the place. We saw loads of giant sea gulls, an interesting species of bird that was black and white and flittered around as ADHD as blue jays! The clouds moved in making our walk through the grounds blustery and lovely. It was quite relaxing to walk about the cobbled stones in the open air. We headed into the Resistance Museum knowing we had very little time to see it properly, but chilling even so. They recreated scenes from WWII with miniatures that made for some startlingly evocative memorials. The artifacts, hundreds and maybe thousands of items, letters, radio equipment, old secret printing presses and typewriters used to get underground information to resistance fighters (farmers and boys), even an old can of cyanide and leg-screwing torture devices used by the Gestapo were on display. There were many chilling things that covered the walls, but the thing that took my breath was a display of three Norwegian resistance fighters who were shot to death outside the very building we stood in, and their pictures were printed onto three huge slabs of metal, each with many bullet holes through them. I could feel my spine turn to ice as I looked into the eyes of their dead photographs. Another eerie display was that of a torture chamber where they had a recording of disturbing thumps and sounds, and a moving image of a man trying to break his way out of his confinement. One man in such a chamber had detailed his stay by recording his hellish existence onto toilet paper. We had to hurry through the last of the exhibit because they were closing, but as I was choking up at every scene, that was probably for the best.
Taking the ferry back to the hotel for a bit of a rest, then finishing our evening of perfect weather with a stroll around the grounds of the Royal Palace. A beautiful park with loads of people still about, we had a romantic walk and talk, then headed back for a full nights slumber!
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