This would prove to be a much less eventful day. We really only had one place to visit. Perhaps we should have been more ambitious with our plans but I certainly didn’t really do any research into things to do beyond some pretty basic stuff and Mom and Dad did not do much more. We also seemed to be in something of a low-energy state.
We wanted to visit the Vigeland Scuplture Park. It’s actually located in Frogner Park. The sculpture park is 80 acres in size and is home to the Vigeland Installation composed of 221 bronze and granite sculptures depicting home and social life from the very young to the old. The capstone is the Monolith which rises some 17 meters and is covered in what appear, from a distance, to be twisting curving carvings but are actually people climbing to reach the top.
It is a remarkable installation and you certainly get a sense of what Gustav Vigeland intended his people to be doing in each sculpture. It’s also just a pleasant place to walk through a nice city park.
We left the park just before noon. Dad had a store he wanted to visit and we decided to walk the couple of kilometers to where we thought it was. It wasn’t a terribly exciting walk from my point of view but it did expose us to a bit more of the city especially the park that surrounds the palace. Unfortunately we never did find the store. Perhaps it is closed and gone. We did eventually find ourselves having what will no doubt rank as one of the worst lunchtime dining experiences as far as the food goes we have endured in some time. It was a chain restraint and while it surely must have countless fans it was not good for us. To be fair they did their best to make things right.
We did see the ticketing system on the public transit system in action. While returning to the hotel on a tram a ticket inspector came down the aisle. I opened the Ruter app, tapped the Inspect Ticket button, he scanned the ticket and that was that.
Photos
There are 212 bronze and granite sculptures all created by Gustav Vigeland in this park. This bronze is just one example of a glimpse into a human activity (granted not something you would expect to do). Photo by Jonathan.
—June 15, 2023 at 10:35 AM.
Along the main promonade you slowly ascend level by level until you reach the top. On every level you find fountains. This is, I believe, the grandest of all of them. Photo by Jonathan.
—June 15, 2023 at 10:43 AM.
One of the perhaps 39 sculptures (all granite), that surround the Monolith. These range from younger adults, sometimes with children, to considerably older adults. We think this might be the quintessential couple enjoying each other’s company.
—June 15, 2023 at 10:54 AM.
The Monolith depicts people scrambling to reach the top. I actually do not see it but then I am hardly the best judge of visual arts.
—June 15, 2023 at 10:59 AM.
The morning has been warming up and we fully expect the temperature to creep well above 80F again. These few clouds likely did not hang around all that long. Later in the mid-afternoon the sky would cloud over and we actually felt a drop or two of rain but those would clear out too. Here you can get a sense for the several level you climb to reach the 17-meter high Monolith.
—June 15, 2023 at 11:19 AM.
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