On the 1st, John, Judy, Karen, Erik, Timothy, & Clara visited the Vigeland Parken. This is a very large park with 212 sculptures. The bronze and granite sculptures and the park itself were all designed by Gustav Vigeland. We spent a few hours here, as there is a great deal to see -- and the kids loved it! There is one area where there are several statues of babies, which Clara just loved.

Timothy enjoyed clambering around on the large granite statues. He was not alone -- many others were enjoying the statues in the same way. A friend of ours related the following story after we returned:

When I visited, my cousinish relative (what's your grandfather's brother's grandson called?) told me of a visit to the park in which a German lady got very upset with him for letting his daughters be so ill-behaved as to enjoy the park, and he replied, "Pardon me, but my grandfather climbed on these statues, my father climbed on them, I climbed on them, my daughters shall climb on them, and I hope my granddaughters will climb on them also."

There is a huge maze in the pavement around the fountain near the center of the park, constructed in such a way that one could follow a single line through countless hundreds of twists and turns and switch-backs, slowly making one's way all the way around the fountain. Timothy and Karen spent a long time doing just that, but got less than a quarter of the way around the fountain before we went on to see more of the park. Here is a sketch of the maze; to give you an idea of the scale, the square in the center (for the fountain) is probably about 50 feet across.

After spending a nice long time in the park, we headed over to the Norwegian Nobel Institute, where John has been a Senior Fellow this semester. It was a Friday mid-afternoon late in the semester, so things were very quiet. However, we did bump into the director, Dr. Geir Lundestad, on the stairs. Timothy shared not only his name, but also how it is spelled; then he told Dr. Lundestad that he wanted to win the Nobel Prize (we'd been telling him a bit about it on the way there, and he's very keen on the idea of winning prizes). Dr. Lundestad asked us to wait a moment; when he returned, he gave each of us a round gold foil-wrapped chocolate bearing the name and likeness of Alfred Nobel (see photo). Cool!

On June 2nd, we saw real Viking ships, visited the Norsk Folkemuseum, and re-viewed the sculpture park....