This is an artistic view of Oslo. For a spiritual view, look at ''I met a monk in Oslo''.
For a Copenhagen article, look at ''Fun tour of Copenhagen''. For Copenhagen and Hamsun, look at ''Knut Hamsun's Copenhagen''.
Edvard Munch is Norway's national pride when it comes to painters. Edvard was an early expressionist. Which means he presents his paintings with a lot of subjective interpretations. Psychological elements take a strong part of his paintings. Expressionism opposes Impressionism. Impressionism takes the painting more for what it is. For example, The Opera in Oslo is an opera. It's not a cage full of freedom seekers that compiles enlightened people who are searching for the collective unconscious.
The thing that I think is awesome is that Munch has a lot of impressionistic paintings that became a big deal and he is still regarded as an expressionist. Just like the Hannah Montana song, he gave us ''the best of both worlds''. This was because expressionism was a new way. As we know, you're more fluid in changing style when the artform is new.
Munch versus the Impressionist
The impressionist: Akershus Fortress. It's the fortress from 1299 where the king and his friends hanged out a lot. They also hanged other people there. There's a nice tree. Look at that beautiful stone.
The expressionist: This fortress is run by aliens. The people there were consciously deluding themselves and turned their spirit into a devil by taking part of this ridiculous parade of organized chaos. It was like this when it was built and the people using this as a national symbol is still part of the terror that is covering the atmosphere.
It's in place vs out of place.
Fun facts about Edvard Munch and Oslo
It's the city where Munch started out as an artist
There is a museum dedicated to him here since 1963
The famous painting ''Scream'' has a second version in his museum
The Grand Cafe in Karl Johans street is to Munch like Sarte and Hemmingway to Les Deux Magots in Paris
Munch himself called Oslo (which then was called Kristiania) ''The enemy city''
He chose to isolate himself from people and still remained productive during his Oslo years
A sad life
Munch himself had a lot of sadness. A bunch of death surrounded him and you see similar things in his paintings. Just check out Munchmuseet. He don't present Oslo as the most amazing town. Munch was first a realist painter actually. Which is more like the impressionist. Perhaps the sadness that life brings him makes it necessary to escape reality. It's like when you're a child and create imaginary people in your life because the rest of the world is not so good to you.
Talking about escaping
There's something called ''Escape games''. You buy tickets and enter a room with other friends or random people and try to solve the puzzles in order to get out of there. It's fantastic how real it becomes when you put your physical body into it. I recommend Oslo because it has the best escape games in Europe.
Theft at the museum
His most famous paintings ''Scream'' and ''Madonna'' were stolen from the Munch museum. Two guys ran in and just took the paintings and ran out and jumped into an Audi and that's it. A couple of years later the police fixed some things and confirmed that the paintings were back in the museum. Check out this place before the paintings disappear again.
Fun facts about Oslo
The King and Queen and their family live here in their palace
In 1352 there was a huge fire in Oslo and the city was pretty much rebuilt. Buildings from that time still stands tall! After that the city was called Christiania
The nobel peace price is given out here in Oslo every year the 10th of December which is the day Alfred Nobel died
Want to plan a trip here? Talk to AI travel assistant Maya.
Interesting towns related to this story
The author
Kai Bonsaksen
Plan a trip with Maya - your AI travel assistant
