Day 4 in Norway - 8th September - 10pm

What an evening I’ve had! First, after posting the last post, I took off for the hostel I was supposed to stay this night in – it was a lil away from the town center, had to take a tram to get there. But man, I wish I’d stayed here last night as well! Its really well located, on top of a small hill, giving a great view around. Quite picturesque, and nice and cozy. Checked in, got into my room and dumped my stuff there. Then I took off to go to the Vigeland garden.

That was actually on the other end of town, so had to change trams getting there. The weather was looking splendid – and it seemed like we’d have an awesome sunset. So I took my tripod with me – just to make sure…

Am I glad I did that! By the time I got to the garden, it was about 7, and sun was just in the process of setting. The entire sky was awash in brilliant colors – golden, white, blue….Absolutely beautiful….

On entering the garden, I was spellbound – hadn’t expected it to be so beautiful. The sculptor Vigeland basically made A LOT of sculptures to decorate this garden – some history behind why which I’ve forgotten. But basically, as you walk down the central path, its lined with his sculptures. They all depict the human form – men, women, or children – all in various poses depicting various aspects of life. The figures are typical – all nudes, men and children bald, depicting the human form in its absolute totality, completely exposed. They show various moods and emotions in human life. Apparently the sculptor was anyway a sort of depressed person in life – so there is a certain element of tiredness, anger or despair in many of them.


Took tons of photos on the way down the path, setting the tripod down and getting some great shots of the statues against the speckled sky.

As one walks down, in the center there’s this HUGE fountain, one of the most magnificent I’ve ever seen. 6 strong male statues hold up this great big bowl out of which the fountain pours. You can see in the pose of these men that its taking them a great amount of effort to hold it up. Its absolutely perfect, the way its done. The effect couldn’t have been more marked.

Further down comes the main piece in the garden – Vigeland’s giant monolith. This is a huge sculpture in the form of an obelisk composed of crawling human forms. They’re all clearly earthbound, and again Vigeland draws on his main theme, pulling the humans down and at the same time making them all reach upwards for the sky. It’s a very telling sculpture, and quite powerful.

Surrounding it are many more sculptures again. One amazing element of this park, which makes it so beautiful, is its symmetry. I’ve come to realize how much of a difference perfect symmetry makes in our perception of beauty. An example that immediately springs to mind is the main quad in Stanford – that always struck me as so beautiful just because its so absolutely symmetric – right down to the line of palm drive bisecting the oval and quad. Another such building is the Taj mahal. With all of these the beauty is so enhanced by symmetry. And so it was with this garden too. All sculptures was symmetrically placed, the patches of grass on either side were symmetric, the flower beds were too, and so on.


The park itself is actually quite huge – about 75 acres – but I didn’t get to see much of it. Walked around a little, then left. All of the 75 acres are scattered with his statues here and there. But the main area is the stunning part.

I’m glad I went – I almost didn’t, as it was pretty far from the hostel. But was totally worth it..

Traveling by tram is also fun. One gets to see a lot of the city…And the people…Oslo seems quite cosmopolitan – definitely much more so than Copenhagen. One sees a lot of Asians around – both south Asians and south east Asians. Also a fair number of blacks, which surprised me as I saw pretty much none in Copenhagen. Definitely lots of Indians – even at the vigeland garden there was this big Indian family – seemed tamilian, actually…Wonder why oslo particularly has so many – lets see how it is in Stockholm.

Anyway, just got back, and will probably sleep in a while…Gotta leave for the station earlyish tomorrow to make sure I get there in time to catch my train to Stockholm.