Day 10 - Saturday, July 30 - back in Oslo

 We had a beautiful sail into Oslo this morning arriving around 11am and another beautiful day with temperatures that went into the mid-70s by the afternoon. Our ship is docked right downtown and the Akershus Fortress is just outside our window. 

The ship has educational talks each day and this morning there was one on the history of the Norwegian resistance during WWII. We hadn't realized that the Germans were forced out of Norway and Denmark by the resistance and not with direct military assistance by the Allies, although the Allies had provided munitions support and some bombing support.

Before leaving on our tour this afternoon I walked around the grounds of the fortress which was started in 1299 but is mainly from the 1500s. It is still the headquarters of the Norwegian Military. 

The yellow buildings in the very lower-left of the fortress photo below are temporary worker housing that we've seen in many places. They are modules that can be placed side by side and stacked, then removed when no longer needed - quite novel.

We had another city tour before going to Vigeland Park, the world's largest outdoor sculpture park, featuring over a two hundred large bronze and granite sculptures by Gustav Vigeland, sculpted 1900 - 1949. https://vigeland.museum.no/en/vigelandpark. There are also beautiful flower gardens and fountains although due to the drought, the fountains are not operating. The tall sculpture is the most famous and took 3 sculptors almost 20 years to complete. The "Angry Boy" sculpture is one of the most popular which would probably surprise the artist.

We then went to the world's largest ski jump which was just completed in 2011 - it is hard to imagine coming down this! In the summer there is a zip-line that one can take down for entertainment - looks like fun! At the ski jump there is a sculpture (not Vigeland) of the Norwegian King's dog who would go cross-country skiing with him. We saw people training on "roller skis".

Vigeland Park sculptures



Vigeland Sculpture garden

Vigeland "Angry Boy"

Olympic ski jump

Norwegian King's faithful dog

Akershus Fortress from our window

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