Copenhagen to Oslo
A morning boatride around the harbor along with the tourist hordes we joined
preceded departure on the overnight ferry, including sleeping cabin, for Oslo.
Another literary association brought the significance of this passage in view. It was the location of The Surgeon’s Mate, the seventh in the Aubrey-Maturin series of 21 novels by Patrick O’Brian I’ve become addicted to. Set during the Age of Sail and the Napoleonic Wars of the early 1800’s, these blockbuster books have been called “the greatest historical novels of all time.”
The often narrow passage between Denmark, Sweden and Norway, control of which has been contested since the Viking age, provides the only sea access from the Atlantic and beyond to Germany, Eastern Europe and Russia.
At at a table in the congenial bar on the rear deck I noticed a man writing notes on a pad next to a thick book stuffed with multicolored stickies. Aha, I thought, an academic! Despite fifteen years since retirement from the profession, I felt no reluctance in striking up a conversation. It turned out he was a professor of African-American studies, working on his third book. His wife was heading a Social Work program, and they were riding up to Oslo and returning to Copenhagen the day after arrival.
Jan joined us for a heated happy conversation, and next morning we exchanged hugs and contacts. But I’ve lost the information. It was another of those travellers’ meetings, sufficient in itself, reminding me of the phrase I had learned from our tea ceremony host in Japan in 2010: “One life, one encounter.”
Upon arrival in Oslo, we were greeted by the local guide, a moonlighting building contractor who hailed from a village north of the Arctic Circle, hired to lead a City tour. Regaling us with sordid gossip about the Royal Family, he drove us in a van to the out of town hilltop location of an Olympic ski-jump training facility–not a place of pressing interest for me–and then to a reputedly world reknowned sculpture park exclusively featuring the work of Gustav Vigeland. It was impressive to be sure, but left both of us cold. The last stop was the Fram Museum, containing the preserved ship built and led for the first successful expedition to the South Pole in 1911 by Roald Admundsen. Wandering upon and below decks vaguely recalled the account of that trip and the brilliant heroics of its leader that enthralled me in the 1952 Landmark book and affirmed that positive aspects of the Viking spirit have remained.
After checking in at the portside Radisson Hotel reserved by the tour, we searched for a place to eat in another jam packed and very expensive tourist district. We ate falafel pita at a dirty sidewalk table and ended up crashing early.
Again the selected luxury hotel offered a lavish breakfast leaving behind mountains of food waste. However, it did offer advice on how to behave sustainably.
Before departure to the train station, I explored some of the new monumental buildings at the waterfront, including another Opera House, financed by Norway’s vast North Sea oil production.
