This travel update is for part six of our week in Oslo, Norway. It covers July 25.

July 25, 2023 – Monday: The Rådhus

We decided to walk down to the touristy area of the city again today to look at the tourist trinkets for sale. Once we got down there, however, we found the Oslo City Hall which was impressive so we spent about an hour walking around the building inside and out.

“Oslo City Hall (Norwegian: Oslo rådhus) is a municipal building in Oslo, the capital of Norway. It houses the city council, the city’s administration and various other municipal organisations. The building as it stands today was constructed between 1931 and 1950, with an interruption during the Second World War. It was designed by architects Arnstein Arneberg and Magnus Poulsson. The building is located in the city center, in the northern part of the Pipervika neighbourhood, and it faces Oslofjord.”

Here’s what it looks like from the outside.

There are a bunch of really nice wooden friezes in the courtyard that document stories from Norse mythology. We spent a while reading the stories and looking at the friezes. Here’s an interesting one that I’d not heard about before, it was titled “Volund the smith has vengeful thoughts”.

Here’s the story: The evil and greedy king Nidud captures Volund, severs his hamstrings and orders him to forge costly jewelry on a deserted island. The king has stolen a ring from Volund and given it to his own daughter, Bodvil. Now the ring is broken in two and Bodvil secretly travels to meet Volund in order to have it forged into one whole ring again. The king’s two sons are tempted to the island by all the gold the smith has. Volund cuts off the boy’s heads, mounts their skulls in silver, and sends them to king Nidud as drinking vessels. From their teeth he makes a brooch to Bodvil, and he mounts their eyeballs as precious stones in a piece of jewelry for the queen. Finally, he rapes Bodvil and she becomes pregnant with his child.

That’s just one more heartwarming legend from Norse mythology.

This one was a little nicer, titled “The Norns pour water on Yggdrasil”. In case you didn’t know: “Yggdrasil (from Old Norse Yggdrasill) is an immense and central sacred tree in Norse cosmology. Around it exists all else, including the Nine Worlds.”

The norns Urd (the past), Verdande (the present), and Skuld (the future) are three powerful goddesses of destiny. They live by the Well of Urd where one of the roots of Yggdrasil ends. Here the gods ride over Bifrost (the bridge that connects heaven and earth, the rainbow bridge) on their way to council. The norns water the world tree’s leaves each day with spray water from the flood. From this comes the dew that falls in the valleys, and this is why the holy tree remains evergreen above the Well of Urd.

That’s nicer isn’t it? I think these Norse stories are interesting. We won’t go into what happens at Ragnarök.

Getting inside the City Hall is free, we just had to go through security. It was worth it, there was a lot of beautiful art in the main hall.

Here’s the south wall.

This side wall depicts the German occupation of Norway during WWII. You can see Patti in this picture.

Here’s a closeup at the beginning of the story where some people are escaping, German planes are flying overhead, and Germans are tearing down buildings. Patti’s in this picture too.

We spent over an hour at the Rådhus and really enjoyed it.

After that we got lunch at a Thai restaurant then walked up the street to the cathedral. We’d walked by the cathedral before when it was closed, but now it was open and was very nice.

In case you’re wondering about religion in Norway:

“Religion in Norway is dominated by Lutheran Christianity, with 68.7% of the population belonging to the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Norway in 2019. The Catholic Church is the next largest Christian church at 3.1%. The unaffiliated make up 18.3% of the population. Islam is followed by 3.4% of the population. A bill passed in 2016 and effective as of 1 January 2017 created the Church of Norway as an independent legal entity. Until the 2012 constitutional amendment Lutheranism was the state religion of the country. The Church of Norway will still obtain financial support from the state of Norway, along with other religious communities. Early Norwegians, like most Scandinavians, were once adherents of Norse paganism; the Sámi having a shamanistic religion. Norway was gradually Christianized by Christian missionaries between 1000 and 1150. Before the Protestant Reformation in 1536/1537, Norwegians were part of the Catholic Church.”

There was a nice pipe organ in the back.

This bronze of The Last Supper was interesting, with Jesus sitting in between two tables.

After the church we did go through a couple of tourist stores and got a refrigerator magnet of Oslo, for our collection. Then we walked back west to the waterfront where there were quite a few sailing ships.

And we walked around the deck of the Hestmanden.

This ship has a nice story.

“SS Hestmanden (The Horseman) is a Norwegian steamer, which since 2017 is the travelling museum ship Norsk krigsseilermuseum (the Norwegian War Sailor Museum). Hestmanden is the only preserved cargo ship that has sailed in convoys during both World War I and World War II. It is the only remaining ship of the more than 1,000 that were part of the Nortraship fleet during World War II, and therefore represents a central part of Norway’s war history and maritime history. Called “the lucky ship”, as it survived convoys in two world wars, Hestmanden is considered Norway’s most valuable veteran ship.”

After the harbor we walked back home.

Future Plans

• July 18 – 26: We are currently staying at an Airbnb reservation in Oslo.
• July 27: We fly Norwegian Airlines from Oslo to Longyearbyen.
• July 27 – August 2: We reserved an Airbnb in Longyearbyen.
• August 2: We fly SAS Airlines from Longyearbyen to Tromsø.
• August 2 – 10: We reserved an Airbnb in Tomsø.
• After Tromsø, we may head south down the coast of Norway, making reservations as we travel along.
• October 17 – December 3: No plans yet.
• December 3 – 9: I will be participating in research in Durham, North Carolina, at the Med-El facilities there. Med-El is the company that made my Cochlear Implant. I’ll spend 9am to 4pm for five days being a lab rat. They say they will test various new programming options for my cochlear implant with the goal of improving their systems. It should be fun. I’m looking forward to it.
• December 9: We drive to Bradenton, Florida
• December 9 – 31: We reserved a cabin at Horseshoe Cove RV Park in Bradenton, Florida, where we stayed last year for two months (November and December). We look forward to singing in the Christmas Choir again.

2024

• January through April: We plan to travel through Belize, Costa Rica, and Panama. We don’t have any reservations yet.
• May and June: We reserved a cabin at Horseshoe Cove RV Park in Bradenton, Florida. We’ll spend these two months getting our yearly medical stuff done and visiting with family and friends. May and June are “off-season” in the Sarasota / Bradenton area, and the rate is $56 per night for these 61 days, which is pretty good for a place like this in this location. In season, January through March, the price doubles.
• After June 30, we have no plans, but we are entertaining options about where to travel next summer. Maybe Germany/Austria/Switzerland?