Six months I’ve been in Sweden and I haven’t seen one Viking thing, other than living on Valhallavagen. And finally:

Oh wait, these aren’t real Viking symbols. It turns out:

But these are:

Here’s a village:

An artifact:

Some coins:

Combs. All I keep thinking when I go to museums that one day you use something, the next, it is in a museum:

And a little movie, detailing the “travels” of the Vikings. By travels I mean sailing to warmer ports to seed the local population with attractive blonds:

Bracelets:

And the lucky boy who found these:

Funny, I thought the treasure was at the Kaaa, the Kaaa, the Cathcart Towers hotel. Molto molto pericoloso….

The perfect illusion of protection:

Now this is an obscure reference, Jenn.

Walhalla, Valhalla, both equally horrible. Fotvard:

Well, these bike photos are from the same cafe, day and country as the chair photo underneath. I of course took tons of photos and am only posting two and an edited one. I could post all of them, but then the few people who do visit will get bored. I only think of my viewing public. Here goes:

And an edited version:

It is for you my public I work my hardest.

Yeah, of course I was sitting in a cafe in Norway, waiting for the rain to pass, fiddling with my camera. The results are above. Is it art? Not sure, but I like it.

I was looking at this and thought “I could pass this person on the street any day of the week.” Strange how what you think of a face changes when you find out the name behind it:

Just kind of interesting, that’s all.

But someone actually managed to capture my exact demeanor when I get up in the morning:

Who is this genius? Gustav Vigeland, turn of the century Norwegian sculptor and someone who incurred the wrath of previously mentioned stable Mable Edvard Munch. The Norwegian government gave the money for Vigeland to design this park. Munch, obviously keeping on keeping on with the crazy, wrote on his tax returns that he didn’t want his money to be used for this project.

And can we see what got Munch into such a tizzy?:

And of course, there was a little museum next to the park that disappointingly didn’t provide a lot of information about how the park came to be, but did sell me yet another t-shirt with some kind of angry sarcastic stuff on it in an un-understandable Scandinavian language. The museum also provided some insights into Vigeland’s private life, which was filled with wives, mistresses and “models who worked at the studio” AKA mistresses in training.

But there was also more of his work:

Is the lizard hugging the girl or killing her? I guess we are not meant to know.

There was also a little demonstration about for where the baby wence done came:

And some of his other sculptures:

I still don’t see what Munch’s problem was with all of this. Maybe this was a Strindberg-Ibsen kind of a thing.

What on earth is he doing here?:

You kind of have to look close, but you can see, those of you who keep up with the turn of the century Scandinavian playwrights that a portrait of August Strindberg hangs on the wall of this particular and rather special place, which of course belonged to Henrik Ibsen:

And to remind all of you about Mr. Strindberg, he is this rather happy looking fellow:

We are not at the Strindberg museum. No, this was the last office of Mr. Ibsen, internationally famous Norwegian playwright and master of hilarity. Why do I give him this particular moniker? Well, the portrait of Strindberg hung on the wall of Ibsen’s study because he needed to look at the competition to get inspired. The very knowledgeable woman who gave us the tour of the apartment said that Ibsen knew that Strindberg was younger and nipping at his heels, to get the title of depressingest Scandinavian playwright.

Well, Ibsen turned out to be way less depressing than I could have ever imagined. I learned on the tour that
when Ibsen would get writer’s block, he would take figurines out of his desk that were little devils and put voices onto them. And then probably mutter some kind of four letter words in Norwegian about that Strindberg guy.

The rest of the apartment was interesting, not least of all because of this:

This is not a painting. It is a photograph. I was amazed because when the photo was taken, probably at the turn of the century, such an endeavor was rare and very expensive. Having your photo taken like that one of Ibsen up there was the equivalent of having your portrait done by Andy Warhol in the 1960s.

There was an exhibit too attached to the apartment:

This is Ibsen on his daily walk to lunch, which he always made at 11:30 and came back home at noon. And you got a few tidbits about Ibsen’s later life:

Now this I found funny, slightly for a few reasons. Ibsen was a middle class creature of habit by the time he became a famous playwright. Just like Mark Twain in his later years. The best bit though was the part about Ibsen’s “friendships” with young ladies later in his life, who were later not able to establish normal relationships with other men.

Scandinavian artists. Complicated. And that’s all I’m saying about that one.

And, lastly I attach a photo of Ibsen’s grave and I’ll explain in a minute why:

My friend and I went searching in this cemetery for Ibsen’s grave in the rain and darkness for over an hour. Did I mention that while we were wandering in this graveyard bells started going off, like in some Ibsen play? Dance of Death indeed. Wait, that was Strindberg. Hehehehehe…..

What on earth is he doing here?:

You kind of have to look close, but you can see, those of you who keep up with the turn of the century Scandinavian playwrights that a portrait of August Strindberg hangs on the wall of this particular and rather special place, which of course belonged to Henrik Ibsen:

And to remind all of you about Mr. Strindberg, he is this rather happy looking fellow:

We are not at the Strindberg museum. No, this was the last office of Mr. Ibsen, internationally famous Norwegian playwright and master of hilarity. Why do I give him this particular moniker? Well, the portrait of Strindberg hung on the wall of Ibsen’s study because he needed to look at the competition to get inspired. The very knowledgeable woman who gave us the tour of the apartment said that Ibsen knew that Strindberg was younger and nipping at his heels, to get the title of depressingest Scandinavian playwright.

Well, Ibsen turned out to be way less depressing than I could have ever imagined. I learned on the tour that
when Ibsen would get writer’s block, he would take figurines out of his desk that were little devils and put voices onto them. And then probably mutter some kind of four letter words in Norwegian about that Strindberg guy.

The rest of the apartment was interesting, not least of all because of this:

This is not a painting. It is a photograph. I was amazed because when the photo was taken, probably at the turn of the century, such an endeavor was rare and very expensive. Having your photo taken like that one of Ibsen up there was the equivalent of having your portrait done by Andy Warhol in the 1960s.

There was an exhibit too attached to the apartment:

This is Ibsen on his daily walk to lunch, which he always made at 11:30 and came back home at noon. And you got a few tidbits about Ibsen’s later life:

Now this I found funny, slightly for a few reasons. Ibsen was a middle class creature of habit by the time he became a famous playwright. Just like Mark Twain in his later years. The best bit though was the part about Ibsen’s “friendships” with young ladies later in his life, who were later not able to establish normal relationships with other men.

Scandinavian artists. Complicated. And that’s all I’m saying about that one.

And, lastly I attach a photo of Ibsen’s grave and I’ll explain in a minute why:

My friend and I went searching in this cemetery for Ibsen’s grave in the rain and darkness for over an hour. Did I mention that while we were wandering in this graveyard bells started going off, like in some Ibsen play? Dance of Death indeed. Wait, that was Strindberg. Hehehehehe…..

Famous Norwegian artist. Professional crazy person. This is a photo I took in a movie about Munch’s life they showed at the Munch museum. I don’t remember what part of the Munch’s life this may have been dealing with. We could be at the part when he purchased a revolver, shot himself in the hand and then went to the hospital and demanded to be anesthetized with cocaine to watch the bullet lodged in his hand get removed. Or, was it the part when he took his nude models (male and female) to the beach to paint? That for some reason really irritated his fellow beach goers. Or was this during his days of boozing and nervous breakdown in Copenhagen?

Needless to say, I love this man and his art. Who cannot love a man who makes these types of pictures with these sort of titles?:

Title:

Painting:

Title:

Now the Munch museum is not your everyday museum. In case you didn’t know, a couple of Munch’s paintings have been stolen, including the one I traveled oceans to see (more on that later) so this place was turned into a fortress:

Once you pass through these doors, you can’t go back out again. At the end of the exhibit, there was a door you went out of that was also secure. Not to mention, some of the paintings were behind these glass walls that could close whenever they wanted them to.

Closed:

Open:

And, some of them were behind some rather thick glass:

I guess the message was “don’t steal” or whatever, I don’t know. Finding out about Mr. Munch’s hilarious private life and seeing the fortress his work was kept in added to the fact that the man did produce some beautiful work:

And then there is the little matter of this thing:

I traveled all of those oceans to see this thing and it was of course being repaired after being stolen. Twice. I guess that’s why the rest of the paintings are kept in a kind of fortress like place. I walked the gallery, walked it again and no painting. I finally found out there was a version of it in the National Gallery, so I high tailed it over there, to see the painting and to find out that no photos of any kind were allowed there. That thing up there, in case you couldn’t tell, was a notebook cover from the Munch museum gift shop.

I kind of felt like the person in the Scream about not getting to see the actual Scream. The alternate version was nice, but the colors were muddy. Darn Norwegian thieves. Hasn’t Munch suffered enough already?