A Good Tourist in Oslo?

 

Oslo is on a hill. From the central train station, it climbs steadily. Four miles up is Frogner Park— a grand stretch of green. Advancing to the pinnacle, we passed a mass of bronze, iron, and granite, naked, ordinary people across the age span. Vigeland Park struck me as unusual in three ways: 1. A single artist was given a claim to fill the entire park with their muse. 2. The statues are modern. 3. The people depicted are not kings or princesses. The statues include individuals, small groups, and dozens of intertwined bodies. Some of the groupings made me uncomfortable. Is something abusive going on between this naked adult and this naked child? Others felt like freedom, especially the children playing, and the elders in various forms of embrace.  The figures looked alive.  To make stone breathe is genius.

Playing among the statues were people from southern climates speaking Arabic, Spanish, and Nepalese.  Not used to the Norwegian cool, they dressed in jackets and hats—a contrast to the statues that made me smile.

Further down the hill was the Supreme Court building, which stood out due to its age and grandeur. Facing it was a Palestine solidarity encampment. A Palestinian-Norwegian man staffed a large tent. Inside were exhibits, tea, fruit, and a dozen chairs in a circle.

“We had sixty tents all winter and spring,” he said. “During the spring, Norwegian school children joined us and drew pictures to send to children in Gaza. Right now, everyone is on vacation. Our encampment will grow again in August.”

On May 28, Norway joined Ireland and Spain in recognizing Palestinian statehood, joining 140 other nations.  The Oslo activists were focused on getting the Bank of Norway to divest its pension funds from Israel. There was a precedent: the Bank had divested from Russian assets in 2022 after Putin invaded Ukraine.

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At the foot of the Court building was a circle of Muslim Uyghurs, demanding that China stop detaining and oppressing them. It took me a moment to think of why they might choose a park in Norway for such a protest.  I remembered the Nobel Prize, a chance for people everywhere to advance local causes to the global stage.

The Nobel Prize Museum is another mile down the hill and closer to the water. For $16 a ticket, we learned of the life of late bloomer, Alfred Nobel, the son of a wealthy man, a loser who failed at all he endeavored.  He was also unsuccessful in love, but the woman he desired became a lifelong friend. Bertha von Suttner was a peace activist with a radical bent who convinced  Alfred to do something for world peace with his treasure. The woman behind the prize.

There was a room where you could press buttons, learn about each prize winner, and wonder at the contradictions. Martin Luther King and Henry Kissinger— the deserving one and the war criminal. I thought about the money that comes with the prize. Life-changing for people like King, meaningless for Kissinger.

The great part of the museum was the bookstore.

A few blocks away was the Norwegian National Museum of Cultural History, Egyptian mummies, farm implements,  ancient coins, and quotes about how money can’t buy happiness were thrown together— like a small town museum with an everything-we-got and-the-kitchen-sink. I liked the way they gave the top floor to Master’s degree students, and I enjoyed the bookstore, which had a table, chair, and cheap cups of tea.

At the bottom of the hill, along the coast, we passed two empty iron chairs with no seats, a moving homage to Norwegian Jews who perished, 1940-45. On the water side were bars, a line of taxis, and a stadium with a large screen playing the Spain-England soccer match.

 

As we rounded the bend at the bottom of the hill, we passed a cruise ship on the dock. A man accosted us. “I hate tourists like you! I bet you’re from  the Netherlands.”

I hesitated a minute. Technically, yes, we had just come from the Netherlands,…. I answered, “Worse. We are from the US.”

He seemed not to hear me. “People come from the Netherlands because they are worried about the rising sea levels. They buy up land on our hillside until there is nothing left.” He glanced back at me, “You, from America, must come to escape the chaos. You ride in on cruise boats and pollute our waters.”

He pointed at the horizon. “See those two buildings? Those are all that is left of old Oslo.”

I considered explaining that we were just walking past the boats. We weren’t one of them, but I figured we deserved his shellacking in other ways.

“Norway is supposed to be so rich,”  he went on. “The government is sitting on billions. We see none of it. Everything goes to the tourists.” He walked on ahead of us, but a few moments later, he encountered a young woman, well-dressed, African, crying on the phone in English. “We heard her say, You left me stuck here in Oslo.” The man hesitated. We caught up with him and hesitated too.  Suddenly, we were on the same team, seeing another human in distress, not knowing how to help.  She stepped away from us, showing fear.  The three of us moved on, exchanging a word with each other, hoping she would be alright.

At the train station, we noticed a leaflet plastered on a post that said: Cruise Tourists: We hate you. Become a good tourist.

What is a good tourist? I don’t know for sure, and I know we’re not there. (I use the phrase ironically in this title.) In Oslo, they would like people to stop cruising. They pollute the water and transform the waterfront. Cruise ships support international companies. They would like us to spend locally at independent businesses. They would like us not to buy up their choicest land or rent places raise housing prices.  They would like us to ride trains and buses. They would like us to know Norway is extracting oil in the Arctic, destroying their northland to fuel our airline adventures, and —contrary to popular perception—the government is not spending their oil fortune on the people as much as they need to.

Through the man’s eyes, I looked out onto the port. The glass sculpture on the water, designed to mimic a sailing ship, looked garish. The opera house, with its roof that you can climb, looked like a tourist gimmick. The high-rise Munch Art Museum looked positively ugly, blocking the view of people living in apartments behind it.

We came back another day. This time, we followed other tourists to the roof of the Opera House. It was fun. Then, for sun relief, we took the elevator to the 13^th floor of the Munch Museum. Oslo was hard on our budget, so we skipped the art ticket, sat near the fancy bar, and bought nothing, mooched free rest, free bathroom, free water from the bathroom sink, and a free view of the harbor.

On our last day, before catching a train to Bergen, Norway, we had an hour to picnic on the pier. The weather was perfect: cool,  partly cloudy,  no rain. We watched children swimming at the beach in front of the Ferris wheel. Sun and clouds, boats, and buildings gave everything a painterly look. Across the water, a parade of runners and bicyclists passed, holding green, red, black, and white flags and shouting Free Palestina!. The glass sculpture resembling a sailboat was shimmering and blinding when the sun hit it, mossy when a cloud drifted by. This time I loved it.

This essay about a visit to Norway in July 2024 is part of a series. In October 2023, my spouse and I sold our house in Minneapolis, MN. USA. Since then, we have been traveling the world. I write a blog about each place, with a historian’s eye and an internationalist lens, wondering how memory can liberate the present.