Vigeland

OK, so I'm back in Fort Collins, sitting in the study by the window, but there are still some things I want to write about from the trip...so here goes.

The Sculpture Park in Oslo designed by Gustav Vigeland is an expression of Norwegian culture. The park covers 80 acres and contains over 212 sculptures in granite and bronze. The theme is the human condition: children, men and women in the full exercise of their lives, moments of joy, struggle, play and anger. Like "having a bad hair day" and "boys, you stop fighting...I'm in charge" and "sometimes I think our relationship is just going round and round."







And the afternoon sun was shining. The park was full of Norwegians taking in as much sun as possible. (On their northward evolutionary path, they gave up their pigment, melanin, to make Vitamin D...their sunbathing is adaptation at work). Vigeland's statues and the people seemed to became one experience...a single expression of life.







At the center of the park is the monolith...granite figures of all generations struggling toward...the sun? truth? understanding? The figures at the very top are small children. Around the base are statues and people who seem, again, to share the same form.









I wandered around the park for some hours. A final statue lies at the far end of the complex...again the struggle and the joy of life. But standing there and looking back toward the city, the monolith aligns itself with one of Oslo's many, generally empty, churches In some Norwegian sense, I think the church steeple and the monolith represent the same phenomenon...one in an older religious sensibility and the other in a modern, secular, humanist form. Vigeland's park is a rhythmic hymn to the human experience. The melody lingers long after you bike back to town.

And, of course, the fjords

The fjords are really all around...inlets that are long and narrow, broad and flat...shaping the coastline and people's lives. As many as there are mountains in Colorado, there are fjords forming the water's outline on the land of Norway.

In Bergen we took a cruise on a cloudy day...the fjord was lined with houses and cabins near to the city, but these gave way to long stretches of woods and rock with occasional farms.







The spectacular fjords, though, are the ones that stand high above narrow tongues of the sea. Like Preikestolen in the first photo which is a ferry, bus, and hike away from Stavanger. The hike is longer than the guide books imply...up about 340 meters but quite steep in places...and begins at the two lodges that look over a wide lake.



Taking the cliff route leads you up and around to the main rock itself which drops straight down 600 meters (just shy of 2000 feet)into Lysefjorden. Once there, some folks dangle their legs over the edge. Others (like me) lie on their stomachs and just peek over the edge. On a sunny morning like this one, folks sunbath and enjoy the warm granite beneath them.







And me, I was happy to have made such a classic hike and to find some folks on the trail with whom to speak Norwegian and, afterwards, to share a beer.

Harald Hårfagre

Got up early this morning and, still having time on the 24 hour bike rental, pedaled around and over some of the bridges that link the city of Stavanger with the surrounding headlands, islands, and fjords



Wandered around some of the old port areas where small boats and sailing ships get restored with loving care. I was surprised by the number of such boats in the marinas and along docks and the very few that were out on the water. Being summer, I guess the owners must be on vacation in Morocco.



After breakfast, I got on a ferry to Haugesund, an hour and a half north...fell asleep on the ferry (in spite of the coffee) but did manage to wake up when we docked (though I had slept through landing at the two previous towns). I was awake enough at the beginning of the trip, though, to note the oil platforms



and much older lighthouses.



With backpack firmly strapped on, I managed to find the guest house...in spite of forgetting to bring its address or a map...and then set out on a quest for Harald Harald Hårfagre (Harold the Fairhair or, more literally Harald Hairbeautiful). I'd come to see the monument (one of several) erected in 1872) to mark the place where he is presumed to be buried. He died of a plague about 933 and is credited with being the first chieftain to unite a good part of Norway...probably to control the western waterways along which trade and Viking raiders moved. In the 1200s, Snorre Sturlasson wrote this down based on his visit to this site and to the reigning kings as part of his Icelandic saga. (Snorri himself was murdered in a blood feud back in Iceland...but that is another story).



The monument was erected as part of an effort to promote Norwegian nationalism at a time when it was ruled by the Swedish King. But the site is also archeologically significant not only as a burial site (the Norsk term was "hauglagt" or laid in a mound/hill...the chieftains were buried in mounds found all over coastal Norway) but also for a cross and church built around the time of his death.



The cross had broken apart in the mid 1800s and was put back together with iron rings in 1869. It is believed that it was erected around 950 to honor the death of Harald's son, Eric Bloodaxe (don't ask how he got the name).



But the area around the monument has modern uses: sheep grazing,a campground filled mostly with visitors from Great Britain, and neat lines of snug Norwegian homes.







We sometimes think of the Vikings only as "raiders" but once they got religion (which was used by the "Christian" chiefs to control the "pagan" chiefs), they got it good. Numerous ruins of churches and monasteries are found on these rocky shores. Times do change...just witness those oil platforms out on the sea.

In the harbour

The view from my hotel room in Stavanger looks out directly on a small "visitors" harbor, the Skagen. The city has history (first cathedral in Norway from 1125), active night life, and a busy harbor filled with ferries and ships supplying the North Sea oil wells which have brought such great wealth to this country. Norway is the third largest oil exporter in the world. It also has the highest cost for a gallon of gas, currently $7.75 per gallon. They want to keep people using public transport.

But I was not so interested in the economics as the harbor life. Yesterday was sunny and warm. The wharf restaurants and bars were full. Drinking and eating continued long into the evening. And the evening lasts all night long as midnight comes and goes with the sky still bright.



And then there were activities like trying to roll yourself around in the water in an airfilled plastic bubble.



Or get married.

Janteloven or Jante's Law

After I saw this painting "jeg" in Trondheim(the word means "I" in English), it occurred to me that in English, "I" is always capitalized. Even in the middle of a sentence. That is not the same in other languages where "i" is just another word. Like in Norwegian.

But in Norway "i" is not as important as "I" is in English. And this relates to what is sometimes referred to as Janteloven or Jante's Law...that is a law which governs social behavior. Since my son Tom has recently graduated from a law school, this may be of particular importance.

While Janteloven has ten principles, I shall mention only a few. They are written in Danish but since Denmark ruled Norway for so many centuries and since the current king comes from a Danish family, they also apply here.

1 - Du skal ikke tro, du er noget.
You shall not believe that you are somebody.

2 - Du skal ikke bilde dig ind, at du er bedre end os.
You shall not imagine that you are any better than us.

3 - Du skal ikke tro, at du duer til noget.
You shall not believe that you are good at anything.

4 - Du skal ikke tro, at du kan lære os noget!
You shall not believe that you can teach us anything!

Now as the painting "jeg" proposes, there is an anti-Jante's law movement...fueled perhaps by American consumerism as much as anything. And these principles...some which if you live in the United States, you might have heard in your kindergarten class or in your psychologist's office as an adult.

1 - Du er enestående.
You are exceptional.

2 - Du duer til noget.
You are good at something.

3 - Der er nogen der er glad i dig.
There are someone who love you.

4 - Du har store ubrugte resurser.
You've got a bundle of unused resources.

So now what does that look like. Well I have two pictures from my trip to contrast. Which one is Janteloven and which is anti-Janteloven?





Dear Reader, I will let you decide. Of course societies are composed of both the law and the anti-law, but, in fact, one does predominate. I just wonder if we stopped capitalizing "i" in English, what would happen?

Reunion

We came to Norway this year principally for a family reunion of my father's mother's...in Norwegian "farmors"...family. About 115 people from Norway, Mexico and the United States came We were all descendants of two brothers: Johan Edvard Werge and Thomas Werge. They were both sea captains in the last part of the 19th century. They were born, and their children were born, in the small village of Statehlle on a bay on the western side of the Oslo Fjord. During our reunion, we visited their homes which are still lived in by local residents, though thoroughly updated to modern Norsk standards.


The reunion was held at a small hotel complex on the rocky coast of the fjord. It was organized by several cousins, Arne and Kristin, who devised a set of activities and dinners that provided formal and informal opportunities for all these cousins of multiple generations to hang out and to be with one another to explore...well, who we were, who we are, who we are going to be. A massive chart stretched along one wall of a meeting room...defining the relationships between all of us and those who had gone before. One activity was posing for an official portrait...below some of us were getting ready.









But it was the open time and the informal activities, the picnics on the beach, the dinners, and the drinks on the back porch, that allowed us the space to understand how it fit together.





So we had time to understand how some of our parents' parents' parents' (depending on the generation we were now in) moved to new continents but kept certain traditions. Like naming children: my great grandfather was Thomas, my father was Thomas, my brother is Thomas, my son is Thomas. My father's younger brother, Halvor, died as a child in a fire in Jersey City around 1915, but here again I met a Halvor Werge, about 13 years old, and I imagine that they may have looked and smiled alike. And I could get caught up with my cousin Doris whom I last saw 50 years ago when she and my father's mother's brother and his family came to visit us in New Jersey.

Bethany Werge, 18, my grandniece (if there is such a relationship) had come wondering if there were going to be any people there her own age. There were. Norwegians seem to be held together more tightly by family ties than in the US where the generations tend of identify much more strongly with their age group.



The reunion leaves me with a profound sense of the passage of time...the movement of generations...not just the list of who begot whom...but the sense of history that we carry in our genes and often unknowing act out the past. And how the future is to unfold in the young people and the children who came to this moment in time. I find much to consider in terms of my own past, present and future...though my past now is much longer than my future...and how our lives extend far past our lives into those of others.

Apartment in Bergen

From Trondheim we flew down to Bergen, bringing our cousin Sally from California who had flown into a few days before. We had an apartment which was directly on the water. A narrow deck in the back provided space for a small table and chairs...great space for wine and chips. And for watching kayaks in the fjord. Then my nephew Eric came with his wife Renee and my brother's granddaughter Bethany(my grandniece?) on the afternoon train.



Then cousins from Honefoss, Vegaard and Eivind came by. They were back in Bergen to pick up furniture after finishing their school terms at the university.






Charlotte had prepared a Norwegian dinner....we had gotten wine from the local State Wine Monopoly Store (more on that later)...with local produce. She was being at home...far away from home.










So there was a lot of serious hanging around going on which ended that evening with a hike (and partial run by Eivind and Bethany) up the Fløyveien, the trail leading up to the main overlook of the city. We got there around midnight...sunlight still spilling out of the sky.