Last Friday I flew to Oslo for the weekend. The exhibition I have co-curated on Owen Jones and the influence of Islamic design was opening at the Kunstindustrimuseet, and my co-curator Abraham and I had arranged to attend. We both had a really fantastic time. I had never been to Norway before - to Iceland once for a two week Geography field trip while doing my A-levels, and had really loved it, but didn't know much about Oslo and felt rather unprepared. But what a great city! Small - with only 600,000 inhabitants (only 4 million in the whole of Norway - half the population of London!) and you can walk round most of it in a morning, as I did on Saturday. I headed straight down to the harbour to see the magnificent Opera House, the first structure in a regeneration of the whole port as a cultural quarter - they're building whole new buildings to house their museums! - and has been rapidly embraced by Oslo's residents as a city landmark as well as a touchstone for the current heyday of Scandinavian design. It was covered in snow and the day was slightly hazy with a mix of sun and fog giving it the effect of seeming a little unreal, but the great thing is you can walk all over it, and people do - taking their dogs and kids for a walk...! Amazing views from the top as well.
And our Nasjonalmuseet colleagues were very hospitable. On Friday evening, we were invited to a special dinner in the National Gallery, which houses Munch's The Scream, along with past and present directors of other Oslo museums, who were all extremely friendly and down to earth. On Saturday we attended the formal opening in the afternoon, which featured the premiere performance by piano and violin of a piece of music composed in Seville in 1847 by Ole Bull, a famous Norwegian violinist and composer who was said to be so handsome that women fainted when he came into the room! This piece - alas I can't remember the title - was composed for Isabel II of Spain as a gift (of course they were rumoured to be lovers), and was only rediscovered a few years ago in the Spanish royal archives! It was an amazing piece too.
The exhibition looks fantastic - it's the first venue, and as we weren't involved in the installation, it has suddenly jumped from paper sketches to real exhibition hang, though of course the success of the design has much to do with our Norwegian colleagues. It seemed to be really well received, and apparently one lady was so overwhelmed by the positive message of how Islamic ornament was rediscovered in the 19th century and applied in European design that she was seen almost crying on her way to the cloakroom... Abraham and I took ourselves off for a celebratory dinner that night at the wonderful Viennese-style Theatre Cafe, and treated ourselves to reindeer steak - rather nice, a gamey version of a nice beef fillet steak.
On Sunday morning I went to the Viking Ship Museum for a bit of Norwegian cultural history - an old-fashioned but beautiful museum with astonishing exhibits: two complete and one fragmentary 9th-century ships used as burials and loaded with grave goods to see their passengers well on their way to the afterlife... I couldn't believe some of the stuff which has survived intact due to the excellent burial conditions: wooden sleds, even a whole carriage, cooking utensils, food and drink receptacles... but what I was most amazed by were the fragments of Byzantine textiles which had been cut into strips and sewn onto clothing as precious and ostentatious appliqués. Those Vikings really got around!
In the afternoon I went back to the Nasjonalmuseet to give a lecture, which was quite well attended and, I think, well-received. Afterwards our host, the Kunstindustrimuseet's director and chief curator, and his partner, took me on a little excursion up into the mountains to see the terrifyingly steep world-famous ski jump, and also in time to see the sun setting over the fjords... God, it was beautiful!
We had a delicious dinner of smoked lamb and berries at the Frognerseteren Restaurant, watching the sun set over Oslo, while they told me about Norway and I resolved to bring K here as soon as possible. He'd absolutely love it. When they told me about a cruise you can take up the coast on the old Post Office boat, and an 11th-century wooden church on an island in a fjord with views of glaciers behind, I was sold! We're planning to escape London during the Olympics next year so this might just be the perfect solution!
I came home via a couple of days in Copenhagen because I wanted to visit the recently reopened David Collection with its wonderful jewel-like rooms of Islamic art. I found the Danes a little snooty about Oslo which slightly upset me since I had had such a lovely time there - but Copenhagen is also a beautiful city, much much larger in comparison, and my hosts at the museum friendly and welcoming. What a great few days!
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