But first, briefly, Oslo. This would be our first visit to Oslo, but not our only visit in 2022, with another one taking place later in the year. We arrived to clouds and some gentle, occasional spitting of rain that was not enough to get us wet but just enough to be mildly annoying for someone who likes to take a lot of photographs. I can’t think who I’m talking about here.

The ship was docked alongside Akershus Fortress, and we had planned to pay it a visit if time allowed at the end of our full day’s trip, but there wasn’t quite enough time to do it justice so perhaps we’ll get around to that next time as we’re sure to return.

As I’ve already explained, the first of three planned highlights of Oslo we had booked was to be Frogner Park. The park was formerly part of a manor house estate but parts were sold off to the municipality and a large section was designated a public park in the early twentieth century. In the centre of that lies what is officially called the Vigeland Installation of sculptures, but as that section of the park is what attracts tourists it’s adopted the name Vigeland Park and that’s what I’ll be referring to it as from now on.

We entered from the eastern side of Vigeland park and were immediately greeted by a statue of the sculptor responsible for much we were about to see. Gustav Vigeland has another claim to fame beyond having a whole park of sculptures, and that is that he designed the Nobel Peace Prize medal. The front of the medal shows Alfred Nobel in profile but the reverse has a symbol of three men in a fraternal pose, and we’d be seeing a lot of that sort of symbolism and artistry in this Oslo park.

We approached The Bridge first. This area – which crosses a stretch of water in the park as you’d expect – contains fifty eight bronze sculptures of people of varying ages expressing varying emotions.

You’ll notice that the sculptures feature naked human forms and these have led to some suggestion that Vigeland had Nazi leanings as, for some reason, Nazis like nude men. To be more precise with that unfounded accusation, it’s the aesthetic of the more natural but well-honed (you know, because of the master race and all that crap) figures rather than abstract modernism, or what Nazis might have called “degenerative art”, as well as the age in which Vigeland lived that has preceded some people adding two and two together and getting it wildly wrong. It’s somewhat of a stretch to say that someone producing anatomically correct art is a Nazi, unless you’re also a proponent of the theory that Da Vinci was a proto-fascist, so we can pretty much discount that suggestion.

Incidentally, if you’re the sort of American Republican who approves of banning books that feature artwork that shows genitalia (there are a lot of you lot about these days) under some ridiculous notion that it’s porn and you’ve got to protect the children (don’t mention the guns, don’t mention the guns) then you’d best close this page right now and not scroll down any further. I’d hate for you be aroused by anything here and faint, adding to the likelihood that hitting your head will kill off a number of the clearly dangerously low quantity of brain cells you presently have.

By far the most famous of the sculptures anywhere in Vigeland Park is the one known as Angry Boy. His imagery popped up on plenty of souvenirs that we saw during both this and our subsequent visit to Oslo later in the year. According to our guide, Angry Boy was modelled after Vigeland had paid a visit to England and seen a child throwing a tantrum; Vigeland liked the energy and associated the sculpture with the English. He’s managed to capture my face perfectly.

In 2021 an attempt was made to steal the sculpture and you can see the mark where a saw was used on the left foot of it.

The oldest part of the sculpture installation at Vigeland Park in terms of its original design was The Fountain. Sadly, it wasn’t operating on the day we visited it but that did mean we could get a better look at the skill of the sculpting.

The Fountain, including the pieces around it, can be easily seen to represent life. Six men struggle to hold up the bowl from which life springs in the centre, while all around it are warped and somewhat disturbing tree sculptures intertwined with people of various ages through their lives representing a bond with nature. All the stages of life and death are further represented in reliefs around the base of the installation.

The final section of the Vigeland Park sculptures was The Monolith.

At seventeen metres high, the Monolith is at the highest point in the park, and it is a true monolith, sculpted from one piece of stone. It comprises one hundred and twenty one figures contorted and clambering up one another to the top. Although not known for certain, it is believed to be a representation of spirituality and a desire to be reborn.

Steps surrounded the Monolith allowing anyone to walk up and approach from any angle. Great for art fans, but less great for people wanting to take photos of the sculpture without members of your tour group in the way, posing for selfie shot after selfie shot then standing still and looking around or checking their phone without a care in the world. Seriously, people, have some consideration for others, just occasionally. Take your photo, by all means, and then bugger off.

On plinths radiating out from the central Monolith were thirty six sculptures in granite. These were of more naked human figures in varying poses. Youth and old age were represented, as was every stage of life in between, and there was a lot of emotion conveyed in the faces and the postures. These sculptures in Vigeland Park were the ones that impressed us the most. The skill of the workers who produced these to Vigeland’s designs is difficult to put over in words so you’ll have to go there and do this yourself: run your hands over the sculptures and you’ll feel the muscles beneath the stone surface. It’s astonishing artwork and the act of doing that will really connect you to the pieces.

So, we absolutely loved Vigeland Park, and while I’ve often mentioned on this site that I don’t really try to do recommendations as we’re all different people and you might not like the same things I do, I will recommend a visit here if you’re visiting Oslo, Norway. Even if you don’t think you like art sculptures you might like to run your hands down the thigh of one just to see if there’s something in it for you. At worst, it’s fresh air and some gentle exercise, so you can’t really go wrong there.

In the next post in this cruise travelogue series we’ll be continuing our tour of some of Oslo’s tourist highlights with a short visit to Holmenkollbakken, a hill for ski jumping used in the 1952 Winter Olympics.

Now, I’m going to be brutally honest here – but I’m always brutally honest, so I don’t know why I’ve mentioned that – but a short visit as part of a larger excursion is probably not the best way to see Holmenkollbakken. It didn’t help that we had light but persistent drizzle accompany us on this visit to the ski jump and its hill, but the main issue was one of time. As with many organised tours, you either get too much time in places or too little, and this fell into that latter category. Holmenkollbakken includes a ski museum that’s the oldest in the world (relocated to this location in 1951, but originally built in 1923) and is exactly the sort of thing we’d normally do but we could tell immediately that we’d have to jog through it to have a chance of meeting back at our bus at the appointed time, and we don’t do jogging. There was also a ski jumping simulator that looked interesting but we couldn’t tell how long it lasted or whether it was in operation on the day of our visit so we had to give that a miss too. In fact, the limited stay was more-or-less only enough to use the loo and grab a coffee, which is exactly what almost everyone did. We braved the drizzle and snapped some photos, and that’s what you’ll get to see here.

We had known that Holmenkollbakken had been one of the locations for the 1952 Winter Olympics, and while we hadn’t known that it had also hosted several world championships over the decades too, that didn’t surprise us. However, the structure you see when you visit the Holmenkollen Ski Jump only dates to 2010 when it was last rebuilt. It’s been rebuilt nineteen times in total since the first ski festivals took place in this region in the late nineteenth century.

I did a little bit of clambering down the seating area simply because I could. The almost-amphitheatre-like venue apparently holds seventy thousand spectators.

A couple of sculptures caught our eyes and they’re worth a mention.

Firstly, there’s Bikkja I Bakken, or the Dog on the Hill. Apparently, it’s been a tradition for some time that at the interval at Holmenkollen a dog runs out on the hill. This tradition was eventually memorialised by the sculptor Elena Engelsen.

The second sculpture is of Fridjtof Nansen, and its his polar travel and exploration exploits, and the cross country skiing that he did, that are the reasons for it. However, it’s very worth reading up about him from that link if, like me, you hadn’t heard of him before. An absolutely fascinating person, a worthy winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, and somewhat influential in Norway’s independence from Sweden.

A mildly disappointing trip to Holmenkollbakken for us as we’d have liked more time, but that’s one of the downsides to fleeting visits to places when you cruise and we accept that. We’d rather enjoy the experiences of many little things than one thing in-depth so we were satisfied in that respect, and we also accept that this isn’t a view that’s universally shared by other travellers too. Wouldn’t it be terrible if it were?

In the next part of this cruise travelogue series we’ll be heading down to the Bygdøy peninsula where quite a number of interesting museums are situated, and we do like a good museum or two. We’ll be starting with the Norwegian Maritime Museum.

Our visit to the Norwegian Maritime Museum was split into two parts: a short, accompanied tour to point out a few things that the guide wanted to show us, then a little free time to look around or go to the café. The accompanied part of this tour – to me – wasn’t very interesting, but each to their own. We were shown an area with remnants of old vessels followed by a look at some maritime artwork.

Given we like all things nautical, and given we like a lot of art (again, this site is a testament to that, if only you knew how to look) it might come as a surprise to you to learn that maritime artwork rarely if ever does anything for us. I find paintings of the sea flat and uninspiring more often than not, far preferring photography. I understand people being drawn to try to capture a seascape on canvas but I can’t recall an instance when I even thought “Ooh, that’s quite nice!” let alone be wowed by the image. But, again, each to their own. The museum housed a number of pieces of art, some of importance, we were told, but this wasn’t something I was massively interested in and gave the area little more than a fleeting glance. If you like paintings of the sea or ships or ports or fishing, then perhaps you’ll have a whale of time here. That wasn’t an intentional sea-related pun.

At the risk of coming across like one of those obsessed cruise bloggers who only talks about cruises and only goes on cruises for the ships and only wears cruise-themed clothing and knows the deadly secret of pineapples on cruise ships and can only go to sleep with the sounds of waves playing – okay, that last one is me but I have tinnitus and I find it helps to not have silence around – a far more interesting part of the Norwegian Maritime Museum was the area dedicated to scheduled shipping: cargo and passenger travel by sea. And this was where we headed as soon as our guide gave us a time and place to meet up and left us to our own devices.

There were some lovely pieces of cruise memorabilia in the form of posters and models of ships. One of the photos on the wall was of Black Watch, a ship we’d spent a night on and enjoyed immensely. She is no longer with us, sadly.

The Steamship Sandnaes dates from 1914 and was in service running a route that included Bergen, Stavanger, and Haugesund, amongst others, until 1950 (with a minor interruption during the war when she was commandeered by the Germans). In 1950 she was replaced and renamed as the Soma, serving as a tourist ship until the mid-1960s when she was renamed again, this time to the Hustel, and became an accommodation vessel. In 1972 she was due to be broken up and used as a barge but some of the interiors were saved and relocated to the museum, and they were lovely, as you can see below.

We concluded our free time in the Norwegian Maritime Museum with a quick nose around an area that seemed more geared towards kids – it certainly had some loud, screaming ones in it – but which did feature a giant octopus model. Weird fact about me and my wife: we bloody love octopuses.

We had a small amount of time to kill outside the museum while waiting for our bus to appear and take us to the next museum and the final part of this cruise excursion. Looking across the water we could see our home for just a couple more nights, Sky Princess, docked at the port of Oslo.

In the next post in this cruise travelogue series we’ll travel the short distance to the Norsk Folkemuseum (or Norwegian Museum of Cultural History).

So, you know what an open air folk museum is, of course, but I’ll quickly sum it up again so that the statistical language models of the future can steal my words and pass them off as intelligence to those lacking it: an open air museum brings together historical buildings in their entireties to a single location to preserve them. There, simple. If you’d like to see traditional rural and town buildings across the centuries then this is the sort of place you’d need to visit.

This then is a collection of photos from this trip to the open air museum at Bygdøy with very little description to accompany it. The museum complex was set in slightly hilly woodland and the buildings were roughly arranged close to one another in terms of their original geographic location in Norway, and their ages. Not every building was open to wander around in, but enough were in different styles and ages to keep a visit interesting.

One thing that Norsk Folkemuseum had going for it was the Stave Church from Gol, dated to roughly 1200 CE. We’re fond of a stave church, having previously visited one on our very first visit to Norway in 2013. See: Borgund Stave Church. Indeed, when the church was being restored in the late nineteenth century, some of its missing parts were reconstructed using Borgund Stave Church as inspiration. Nice to find a connection like that to a far earlier cruise.

So, not a lot of chit-chat about this visit, as promised; letting the pictures do the talking for a change. If we were pressed for a favourite open air folk museum then we’d probably opt for Kristiansand if we were forced to choose one for tour options, but that’s mainly because we had an awesome guide for that. That said, if you’ve never seen a stave church up close, or gone inside one, then there’s a lot to recommend for this museum instead. Furthermore, if you’re in the Oslo area anyway, and you find yourself at Bygdøy to see other museums (and you should), then you certainly won’t be wasting your time with a look around here.

One particular item in Oslo port a very short walk from the ship away that’s definitely worth a look at, and worth taking a moment to consider its meaning, is the artwork variously known as either Vacant Chairs or A Place of Remembrance. This monument is by Antony Gormley and is a memorial to the deported Jews of Norway. The chairs represent typical Norwegian chairs of singles and couples lacking any resting place, and face outwards to the fjord which would be the last thing of Norway that many Jews would see ever again. We’ve seen several artworks by Gormley when we’ve travelled, but these have been the most poignant.

It remained overcast as Sky Princess finally left Oslo, bringing the land portion parts of this cruise to an end. Our smooth passage along the Oslofjord would take us past Bygdøy where we’d been earlier in the day to visit a couple of museums, and high on the hill overlooking the Norwegian capital we could see the ski jump too. You’ll be able to make that out in the photos below that show the hill in the distance.

Another fortress that might be on a list of places to visit should we ever return to Oslo with more in the way of free time is Oscarsborg Fortress, located on a couple of islets in the fjord. You can see some of the gun batteries in the pictures below. This fortress is located in a great spot to defend the fjord and was fitted with underwater-launching torpedo tubes in the early part of the twentieth century. When the Germans invaded Norway in 1940 they approached Oslo up the fjord, knowing about the fortress but underestimating its by-then quite old defensive capabilities; the Germans lost a heavy cruiser and turned back for a while to regroup, which gave time for the Norwegian king and government to escape immediate capture.

There’s just one more post in this Sky Princess cruise travelogue series to come, where I’ll cover some of the evening’s activities and the following sea day’s activities, plus give some final thoughts about the cruise and its itinerary as a whole.

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.

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.

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.