On top of that, my wife’s knee was aching from the sculpture park stroll so the one thing we’d told ourselves we definitely had time to do when we got back – look around Akershus Fortress right by the port – we eliminated, too.

“We’re bound to come back to Oslo again,” I said. “Next time we’ll definitely explore the city on our own and we’ll definitely explore the fortress.” And maybe we will. For this particular day in Norway, however, we decided we’d just get back on the ship and enjoy a few hours in the sunshine before departing.

We’d normally head to our balcony in a situation like this; order a drink, sit out and read, etc. But the weather was so nice in Oslo that we decided to hit the top deck instead. It would put us closer to a bar and give me lots of opportunities to see the views from all around the ship rather than a fixed view as the evening’s light touched and changed the scenery of this capital city and the fjord on which it was situated.

A number of local tour companies offer opportunities to see Oslo from the water aboard various types of vessels. I particularly liked seeing some of the older ships taking tourists for an early evening sail on the Oslofjord.

We had spotted Viking Venus when we’d arrived in Oslo in the morning, had driven past her as our tour bus left the city, and we could still her over trees in the distance from Island Princess.

Oslo City Hall is a building that interests me a lot because the architecture straddles that boundary between Art Deco and Modernism. It’s got just a small hint of the former with a lot of the latter represented by the functional form in its material choice and overall design. It’s also the host location for the annual Nobel Peace Price ceremony.

We were out on the top deck of Island Princess long enough for the Viking cruise ship to leave the port and for the sun to creep towards the horizon for sunset before it got cool enough for us to consider returning to our room to change and get ready for the night.

After we’d showered and changed we enjoyed another very good dinner on the ship, settled down for a drink, and planned to have a few more of those while hunting down entertainment around the ship before calling it a night.

As Island Princess finally left Oslo and started to cruise down the Oslofjord we then had an announcement from the cruise director that it might be possible to see the Northern Lights from the ship’s aft as the conditions were right for it. We hurried back to the room, grabbed warmer clothing, and made our way to the back of the ship where it was already quite crowded.

We’ve seen the Aurora Borealis a few times now, but it’s not like it’s something you can tire of seeing. Subsequently, we knew what to expect, which was a lot more than other people who’d come out for glimpses of the phenomenon. We heard disappointed grumbling from more than a few people who thought they’d be seeing vibrant green shimmering sheets of light in the sky. We knew that we’d see incredibly faint, dull patches of barely green at best. In fact we didn’t even see that. Part of it was because we were pretty far south as far as displays of aurorae go so it was naturally very weak and part of it was because there was a lot of light pollution from the city of Oslo itself. What we did find was that playing around with longer exposures on our phones and on the camera could bring out some of the greens that were invisible to the naked eye. Naturally, being handheld on a moving vessel this also meant blurry photos of the city lights and water in the ship’s wake, and a fair bit of illumination of the smoke coming from Island Princess’s funnels.

No brilliant photos of the Northern Lights from Oslo, but we can say that we have now seen them in Norway as well as several (better) occasions in Iceland and that’s no bad thing.

In the next post in this Island Princess European cruise travelogue series I’ll share some photos of the Captain’s Circle Event on Island Princess from a sea day ahead of our penultimate port stop in the Netherlands.

Kistefos is a former wood pulp mill and hydroelectric power plant, making use of the waterfall on the river Randelva to generate power and to facilitate turning wood chips into pulp boards that could be transported and later processed further in paper mills. Within the area that constitutes Kistefos there are historical elements related to this former role which fulfil the museum aspect of the site, but for our tour to Kistefos we were concentrating on the modern art sculpture park and the world famous art gallery that can also be found there.

We had a great day weather-wise for our visit to Kistefos and we were immediately greeted by one of the pieces of art on display in the form of one of what would turn out to be a pair of male figures leaning in towards a structure. As much as possible, I’ve made a note of the name of the artwork and the sculptors responsible on the images themselves in this post so click on them if you need more information about any particular piece.

After a short walk through part of the large wooded area of Kistefos we came to its likely most famous artwork.

The Twist is an art gallery and a bridge and a work of art all in one. Opened in 2019 it has been nominated for awards numerous times and won the Leading Culture Destinations award for Architecture in 2020. The design of the building allows it to be supported by the banks of the river despite them being of different heights and incorporates different height spaces within its length to act as different gallery areas. Its entrance, admittedly, didn’t look like much.

We had to wait around outside the entrance to the Twist for a few minutes because we were visiting out of season. While the rest of Kistefos is open throughout the year – although some artworks are wrapped up to protect them from the elements when this happens – the Twist, because it houses art in the gallery, is open only when the main museum is open. As it also serves as a bridge this means that outside normal opening times there’s a slightly longer route around the park to take as another bridge is needed to cross the river further downstream.

Eventually, though, an employee came along to open up the Twist for us to look inside. A benefit of booking this trip to Kistefos on this cruise tour rather than trying to make it here ourselves was that the number of booked visitors could get us this special treatment.

Inside, the twist that gave the Twist its name became far more evident than it had been from the entrance we’d approached from. We’d get an even better view of the entire structure from the other side, and you can see that further down this post. We were guided through a number of installations inside the gallery space and had the artworks pointed out to us and described.

Let’s be clear here: if you don’t like modern art, whether the sort you hang on walls or the sort that’s sculpted, then Kistefos may not be for you. For us, we loved this. We won’t pretend to like everything or understand a tenth of what we often see but when it comes to art we simply hold to the old truth that we know what we like.

Even if you don’t like the art, the architecture of the Twist is absolutely fascinating.

We were told that there were toilets in the downstairs section of the Twist and we were encouraged to visit them. We didn’t need to use the toilets but we went anyway because we were also told that there were more artworks in that area. The projected facial parts over the urinals in the cubicles were delightfully eerie, and peering in from the river bank through the glass area on the lower part of the building was the second male figure artwork to go with the piece we’d seen at the park’s entrance.

At this point we should have left the Twist and headed back outside but this is when the site’s security system kicked in and suddenly our tour group, our guide, and the employee who’d opened it up for us found ourselves all trapped in an automatically locked-down art gallery. There are worse places to be trapped.

A call on the walkie-talkie and about fifteen minutes of waiting around was thankfully all that was needed for another employee to arrive and open up from the outside once more. We like to travel for the experiences and this certainly counts as one.

Back in the fresh air of Kistefos once more we started to walk around the water’s edge on the opposite bank to the one we’d entered the Twist from. Looking back we could see the proper shape of the building and its unique design, while ahead of us on the river we could see the old pulp mill ahead and some of the larger art sculptures on show.

One of the more visually-arresting sculptures on our walk around Kistefos was Path Of Silence by Jeppe Hein. Comprising four hundred and sixty stainless steel, triangular, mirrored steles arranged in a circular labyrinth and shaped with the contours of the land in mind to take the visitor through three quiet spaces: an inward-seeking space reflecting the views in and encouraging looking up; a natural space with a tree to connect the internal and external structures; a water space with a walls of water fountains making for ever-changing reflected views and the white noise cancelling out everything around.

Had we been visiting on our own then I’d have had to keep a close eye on my wife who has history when it comes to getting confused by mirrors in places. Luckily, with us being part of a tour group she could easily keep track of where she needed to walk, never once walked straight into her own reflection, and made it through the artwork and up to the higher level.

We’re both fond of cephalopods – we like smart creatures; even some humans – so Octopus by Bjarne Melgaard made us smile until I remarked that it looked like the terrifying Kinder Egg Humpty Dumpty character we used to see on TV had mated with Cthulhu. That’s an image that won’t leave the mind.

Energy-Matter-Space-Time by Petroc Sesti was a swirling vortex of mineral oil in a transparent container. It’s very clever in how it seemingly produces the vortex with no visible moving parts but I had to confess to being a little concerned that strong enough sunlight focussed through the artwork had the potential to set the surrounding area alight. Possibly an unfounded fear given the thickness of the construction material and liquid and focal length. Hopefully.

At this point we had almost completed a circle of what we had been taken to Kistefos to see on this tour and we were granted some lovely views back along the river towards the Twist once more.

The final sculpture we passed as we headed back to the bus was All of Nature Flows Through Us by Marc Quinn. This artwork is clearly based on an eye – not a doughnut – and the title more-or-less explains the meaning behind it with part of the river in the landscape cascading through the centre of it. It’s not just the light of our surroundings that comes in through the eye, but every part of what makes that up. We love being by the water in any form, and hearing it pour out and onto the river in this tranquil setting was just beautiful.

That brings the day’s excursion to an end in this part of Norway. There was plenty more in Kistefos to see that we didn’t get a chance to experience – the museum itself, more sculptures, more walking paths – but cruise tours are naturally limited in time. It’s certainly a place we’d not hesitate in returning to because it featured a lot of things we simply like to look at and visit when we travel.

In the next post in this cruise travelogue series I’ll cover some time on the top deck of Island Princess ahead of our cruise away from Oslo and a nice surprise in the evening.

I’ve mentioned before that we like spotting other cruise ships from the cruise ships we travel on so it was nice to spot Viking Venus visiting Oslo on this day too.

Before we’d visited Oslo for the first time we’d had two cruises booked that would be visiting Norway’s capital city, both with the same cruise line, so we checked out the excursions that Princess Cruises offered and identified two that interested us, both full day options. With us having a little more time in port for the second of the visits – this visit on Island Princess – we’d booked an Oslo highlights tour for the first cruise, but for this one we’d be travelling about forty kilometres north of the city so the extra time would allow for a bit of travelling to and from the destination.

That cruise excursion destination was Jevnaker, a municipality, itself part of the greater, traditional Hadeland region. The name Hadeland derives from the old Norse for “the land of the warriors” but we wouldn’t be engaging in any activities that related to war on this day’s tour. We’d instead be discovering that Hadeland could more accurately be described as the land of the artists.

The first element of this cruise tour was a visit to Hadeland Glassverk. This had been described as a glass blowing demonstration in the excursion blurb and it’s a subject that appeals to my wife who’s got a fascination for glassware (as our many filled shelves will attest to), and was the entire reason for booking this trip.

But let’s get this bit out of the way ahead of time: in this respect, this part of the tour was a massive disappointment. Now, that’s no reflection on what we were about to see in Hadeland, which was absolutely fine, very impressive even, but what we’d anticipated and what we actually saw were two very different things.

Anyway, we arrived at Hadeland Glassverk under glorious blue skies and nice, warm conditions, and the first stop was a wander to get a coffee and cake, included as part of the tour. We wouldn’t normally bother with this sort of thing, especially not so soon after breakfast, but when you’re touring with lots of older Americans it’s something they seem to love, and it gave them all a chance to use the toilets nice and early into this day’s activities.

It didn’t take long to get the snack and drink down us and gather outside with our guide.

Hadeland Glassverk is a collection of buildings working with glass, selling them in outlet stores, and showcasing them for sales. Production of items such as jars and bottles for chemists and medical purposes as well as household items began in 1765, but in the middle of the nineteenth century the focus was changed for more decorative pieces, initially copying popular European designs before finding its own forms to sell. With production continuing to this day, this allows Hadeland Glassverk to claim to be the oldest industrial business in Norway in continuous operation.

We were given a short amount of time to wander around the buildings in the fresh Norwegian air and we had a lovely day to enjoy the old buildings of red brick and white boards against the blue sky. All the colours of Norway’s flag.

What we’d actually come to see, however, was the glass blowing demonstration, and here’s where the tour deviated sharply from what we’d been expecting.

We were led into the main factory space where glass blowing was taking place and we were led to rows of raised seating looking across to different workspace areas where glass blowers were blowing and shaping glass. It was interesting to see the process but that’s all that occurred. There was no demonstration of the art; there was no explanation of how colours were added or anything to explain the different methods of producing glassware; no mention of how glass blowing had changed over the centuries. We were tolerated viewers in a factory, and that’s it.

It was as if we’d booked an excursion promising a look at how roads are built, then given some fold out seats next to roadworks beside a motorway and told “Enjoy, and when you’re bored feel free to wander off on your own.”

Okay, we weren’t bored, as such; the glass blowing, even as industrial and uninformative as it was, was still interesting enough to look at for a while. Eventually, though, we did get up and have a nose about. There were examples of Hadeland Glassverk glassware throughout the rest of the warehouse space and we initially had a thought that if we found something small, artistic, unique, and not stupidly expensive then we’d pick up a souvenir. That wasn’t the case, though. Everything was produced to set designs, larger than we liked, and with that size came a price tag we weren’t prepared to spend. There was no doubt, though, that there were some very nice pieces of work here and it was lovely to see them in household display settings.

We used what remained of our time at Hadeland Glassverk with a little more of a stroll outside, taking advantage of the great weather. Hadeland is located at the southern tip of Randsfjorden, Norway’s fourth largest lake, which meant that even though we were inland on this excursion we still got to see water, and water is what makes us happiest.

We liked this visit to Hadeland once you factor out the expectation versus reality aspect of it. A fault that can be shared between Princess Cruises and ourselves in equal measures for not explaining more accurately and not researching fully respectively. In our defence, we hadn’t known the name of the location we were visiting which did make research more troublesome. In that respect, I hope that this explanation about what to expect on a glass blowing tour when visiting Oslo on a cruise ship helps someone out in the future.

In the second part of this cruise excursion we’ll have a completely different experience when a “public modern art sculpture park” visit turns out to be vastly more impressive than we’d expected and an absolute gem of a place in Norway.