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.
