Thursday in Oslo, Part II: City of History

 After I looked through the Vigeland statuary, I treated myself to some local history, since the Bymuseet [City Museum] is open late on Thursdays.

Getting lost on my way to the Oslo Museum, I found a bridge over the lake covered in padlocks. Couples do this on Pittsburgh bridges as well.

Because I was trying to avoid a handful of larger groups touring in Norwegian, I chose to walk the museum backwards, starting with an architectural history of the city of Oslo (the tryptic below depicts the last of many catastrophic medieval or early modern fires, in 1624), then Norwegian culture in the roaring 1920s, historical kitchens (naturally my favorite!), followed by an exhibit on life during the Nazi occupation in the 1940s, and finally a history of the people who have lived in Oslo through the centuries, going back to the 1000s.

Oslo was large enough to be considered a city from ~1000 CE and peaked ~1300 when Hakon Magnusson was the first king crowned there.* However, for most of the medieval and early modern period, when Norway was part of Denmark, Bergen and Trondheim were bigger. (*His son became king of Norway-Sweden, which were together until 1905).

After the 1624 fire, the city was relocated across the river Alna and rebuilt around the Akershus fortress.

My, how it has grown! When Norway achieved independence, Oslo was named its capital in 1814.

Did you know Oslo was called Christiania from 1625-1876, and Kristiania from 1877-1925?

Almost forgot they had a theater exhibit as well with newer (above) and older (below) imaginings of Renaissance clothing.

Singer Anne Brown (1912-2009) grew up in Baltimore, MD, and moved to Oslo in 1947. She married ski jumper and journalist Thorleif Schjeldrup.

This "remembrance room" has furniture and objects from the 1950s-1908s to help people with dementia.

At the end the exhibits pay more attention to current demographics. Like post-war Germany, Norway solved its labor shortage in the 1960s with guest workers from Pakistan, Morocco, India, and Turkey. Immigration was halted in 1975 except for family reunification, refugees, and asylum seekers. In 2014, 31% of Oslo's inhabitants were from outside Norway (9.6% from Europe and 21.5% from non-European countries). The next day, I visited a clinic that serves undocumented individuals who have fallen through the cracks in the system.

This was the view from my window as I went to bed at 10 o'clock at night! The black-out curtains came in handy.

Friday: more art in Oslo