Norsk Folkemuseum

Norway’s largest muse­um of cul­tur­al his­to­ry fea­tur­ing the world’s old­est open air muse­um and large indoor collections.

I learnt that col­or pho­tog­ra­phy is old­er than I thought: Nor­way 1910 – in Colour: An exhi­bi­tion of the first col­or doc­u­men­ta­tion from Nor­way, from Albert Kahn’s Archives de la plan­et in Paris. Some parts of Nor­way reminds me of Tyrol. I had to think that when I was small the straw weren’t big bale of straws whe can see every­where in the world which look the same way. We called them Straw men because they looked like man with a gown.

Out­side they built hous­es from all over Nor­way. I have to admit that I become tired after 3 hours and I would rec­om­mend, come ear­ly, take some­thing to eat with you, make reg­u­lary breaks … or come twice. I was too tired to go to the house of the mid­dle ages and I missed the one or oth­er parts. But I would have loved more expla­na­tions on the hous­es and the way they lived there. Or how long a house with gras on the roof sur­vives? Why did they have sleep­ing hous­es and how many slept inside and why were no win­dows in this house? And so on and so forth. I want to under­stand and they weren’t very in explain­ing.
But the hous­es and the wood­en church are def­i­nite­ly worth to be seen.

Oslo — city views

Dif­fer­ent impres­sions … on one hand I saw the sol­diers in the morn­ing with THESE guns (you have to know that I am Tyrolean and our sol­diers called: Schützen (shitzen — if you spell it) — fought against Napoleon and when they go through the city, they still have their old guns (and the one in South Tyrol have none because the guns are not allowed in Italy).

There­fore I was incred­i­ble sur­prised to see it that way. But on the oth­er hand, the street up to the cas­tle is open and every­one can use the park. The Nor­we­gians still are relaxed and full of trust when you see them. I saw Jacob Zuma — Pres­i­dent from South Africa — when he left the cas­tle vis­it­ing king Har­ald. 5 min­utes lat­er I saw a black man as a guard doing his job. In con­trary to the British guards, the Nor­we­gian moves and also smiles a lit­tle bit (very short — but I could see the one look­ing after the female tourist who want­ed a pic­ture with him).

Yes­ter­day was a big event at the uni­ver­si­ty and all were wear­ing these awe-inspir­ing robes and I saw the same car like the day before (num­ber: A2), now with King Har­ald (but I don’t swear, I am not so good in roy­als). Some tourists were look­ing but the Nor­we­gians imme­di­ate­ly start­ed to walk when he went while the tourist (me) were still look­ing because there was so lit­tle secu­ri­ty around. It was Fri­day after­noon, the sun was shin­ing and they were catch­ing sun­beams and the first breath of the weekend.

Then our famous alpine Ötzi vis­its Oslo. What a sur­prise to see famous inhab­i­tants of the moun­tains there. (And I have to say it here. The Aus­tri­an ambas­sador is from Großpeters­dorf — the most impor­tant, most famous place of South Bur­gen­land because a friend of mine lives there).

Here are some city impressions!