Oslo; The Museum of Design; We meet our Group

July 1, 2016  Oslo

We slept like rocks in our tomb-like room, waking after 8 AM.  A hearty Norwegian breakfast (I ate no herring this morning, but did have some delicious smoked salmon), and off.  We wandered the streets of Oslo, with the goal of finding Heimen, a traditional craft shop, which we did.  There were wonderful handicrafts of Scandinavian design there, and we did some shopping.  http://www.heimenhusfliden.no/ 

From there we got lost and took the long way to the Kunstindustrimuseet, or the Museum of Design (literally, the Industrial Art Museum).  There is a project underway to consolidate the major national museums, and this museum will move to the newly constructed site, opening in 2020.  It is already partly emptied, and currently consists of one major permanent exhibit of industrial and decorative design since the turn of the 20^th century.  The exhibits were arranged chronologically; here are a couple of great items:

Coffee Makers from 1924

A radio by Bang & Olufson from 1934:

A garden chair from 1985:

The final piece of the exhibition heralded “The Death of Postmodernism” and had an explanation which I didn’t understand.  Here are some examples from that part of the exhibit:

We strolled to a local café for a late lunch, and Joyce ordered a hot berry drink to go with her lunch.  It was in a corner of the menu, and when it came it was in a soupbowl-sized coffee cup with hot blue liquid and a spicy odor:

She drank it all!

We went back to the hotel and washed up and had our first meeting with the National Geographic group with which we’ll be traveling.  We were met at 6:00 with champagne and enormous Norwegian sweet strawberries, a beautiful way to be introduced to the group.  After schmoozing with each other for ½ hour, we had an introductory lecture about Norwegian history, geography, geology, genealogy, and everyday family life by the naturalist who will be with us for the whole trip.  He is great!  David Silverberg has married into a Norwegian family, and speaks the language fluently.  He was amusing, personal, educational, and just the kind of guy you’d want to be your trip leader.  He met his wife while doing National Geographic sponsored research on the reindeer and the Sami  of northern Norway, and the rest followed.  I look forward to learning from him. We then went to a lovely dinner and began to meet our traveling companions, all of whom so far seem lovely.  We’re off to a good start.

Up early tomorrow and our adventure begins.