Oslo

I made a stopover in Gothenburg to break the long journey to Oslo. I can't find any photos from there. But I met and shared a room with Wolfram, a German student who studied physics. We later corresponded for many years; he liked to tell me about the plays and films he had seen. I think he rose to a high position in the academic world, but we lost touch after he got married. I have a photo he sent of his wedding.

A reader has tracked down this fountain for me. It's near the Nobel Museum, which I probably visited but have no recollection of. This design looks old fashioned and the building behind looks grey and forbidding. I was probably attracted by the sculpture on the wall.

The Scotsman pub in this shot of the main pedestrian street of Oslo is still there.

This is the sea memorial sculpture on the peninsula of Bygdøy. Several museums are located here, including the one below. Note the natives enjoying the summer day.

I visited the Kon-Tiki museum which exhibits artifacts from Thor Heyerdahl's journeys. His account of the intrepid Kon-Tiki journey captured my imagination when I was a kid. When I digitised these slides I thought this was the raft, but it would have been flat, as it was made from balsa logs lashed together. In fact this is the Ra II from a later journey, which sailed from Morocco to Barbados.

Here is Kon-Tiki, or rather a reassembly of it, since the raft broke up on the reefs when they reached Polynesia.

The debate over whether Polynesia was settled from the west or from the east continues. It seems that DNA testing partly supports Heyerdahl's theory that it was settled from South America, or that at least there was contact.

I walked back to the city from Bygdøy to save on bus fare. Oslo is not a big city; the walk is about 5 km by the map and would have taken me an hour and half perhaps. I recall being grumpy because I had confirmed what the guide book wrote, that Scandinavia was expensive. But I must have liked the colours of this garden that I passed to take a picture.

At least it was a pleasant day and there were some feathered natives to look at along the way.

Large and handsome specimens too.

Frogner Park with the Vigeland Installation, a large outdoor collection of the sculptor's works. I just learnt that he designed the Nobel Peace Prize medal. Learn something new everyday.

I also visited Holmenkollen, where the ski jump Holmenkollbakken has been used for winter Olympics. But I went also to get a vantage point over the city.

Unfortunately grand vistas never look quite as good squeezed into a small picture on a screen. You had to be there.

A distant view of the harbour.