Miscellaneous Writings |
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Oslo, Day 2
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Norway is a seagoing country. When boats die, they are embalmed and put on
display in museums. One museum per boat. A stone’s throw from the Fram’s
mausoleum (the one that took Amundsen to Antarctica) is a museum to the memory (and ego)
of Thor Heyerdahl and his balsawood Kon-Tiki. Another nearby has a set of Viking craft.
These were the truly impressive boats that gave me the shivers. Perhaps it was some
proto-hibernian memory of their rakish silhouettes on the Irish sea, but their shape and
line really moved me. Especially the fragment of a boat in a room of its own, just the
keel and a few hull boards minus the prows. I had a drink with a young, earnest Canadian poet on book tour, and his Norwegian manager, who I met on the street while photographing some especially excessive graffiti. "I learned English in the fourth grade," he answered when I asked why everyone in the country is fluent in it. "I think they start even earlier now. Also I learned German, French and Spanish." When you know that your tongue is never going to be a global lingua franca, you learn everyone else’s (unlike the French who are still miffed, a century on, that theirs ceased being the one everyone had to learn). "Your President though, he’s truly stupid." Who am I to disagree. "At least we’re a clueless superpower. Imagine if we were a country truly determined to conquer the world, instead of running roughshod over everyone by accident." (ed. note—oh how innocent this sounds pre-9/11—this dates from summer 2001). I love talking politics overseas. Oslo has its charming districts after all. By the river where the industrial works once were, it’s at that early stage of gentrification where the artists have found the place but the developers haven’t yet. Good coffee ensues. Nearby are blocks of 19th century four story flats, with enough terra cotta ornaments for interest, and vibrant contemporary paint. The streets too are full of people of different colors. Loud middle eastern music blares from a van. A couple in full wedding dress and entourage, talking Chinese, walk through the park with their photographer. The neighborhood parks everywhere are full of parents with toddlers. There are multiple versions of baby carriages, prim old-fashioned ones with a half-shell shade, sleek tricycle models, and SUV’s with fat, off-road tires. I sense a genuine warmth toward children here, they seem fully loved and secure. Nowhere have I observed the kind of shaming of children that you see so often in the UK and Ireland when families are in public. People appear happy here. There’s an air of self-assuredness to the place, and a calm demeanor to the city. |
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