Free Parken
Central North Oslo – 29th May
The Norwegian word for park is Parken, it can mean a car park or a public reserve park. Put some flowers in the park and it becomes a Hage, which is garden. Today we went by train to Central North Oslo in search of three free parks/parkens, hence the blog title; we also got free parking of course by taking trains and trams.
Vigelandsparken or Vigeland Park
The park is named after the sculptor Gustav Vigeland who made the 200 sculptures in the park and the majority of the ones in Oslo. Most of them are made from stone or bronze, the photos above show some of the extraordinarily large stone pieces, with his common theme of nude people often interacting in some form.
Today’s ABBA tribute is the song title ‘Crazy World’ (1994), as you can see from the photos there are hundreds of tourists, they drive me crazy, off course I’m not a tourist. We could see ten large buses just from one position, according to Wikipedia; this is Norway’s most visited attraction, with 1 – 2 million visitors each year. Why not, it’s free and quite awe inspiring.
Rather than bombard you with photos of his statues I have put together just a few that I have termed his ‘wife carrying’ collection, he probably never dreamed that it would become a sport one day.
Frognerparken
Frogner Park is Oslo’s biggest park at 45 hectares and includes the Vigeland Park, quite confusing. We walked all around the park, trying to escape the tourists, completed a geocache, saw the posh café and then headed to the Frogner Stadium shops for a more affordable lunch. Apparently quiche is meant to be eaten cold, coffee grinds are reused, and real cream comes out of a can, but other than that not a bad lunch.
Botanisk Hage
The University Botanical Garden is the oldest botanical garden in Norway. Finally a garden that we both enjoyed, it has lovely plantings of all sorts, from rockery, herbs, sensory, Granny’s garden, Vikings, roses, a palm house, museum and plant research buildings, green spaces and a systemic garden (whatever that is).
There is no photo, but I assumed because Oslo is a harbour city with no beaches as such that locals go to the park, strip off and sunbathe on the grass as an alternative.
However the flaw in my assumption is that this happens in Denmark and Sweden, not just Oslo, I don’t think we have been to a park yet where there aren’t barely clad sunbathers strewn across the park.
