Sometimes it is nice to have things handed to one on a silver platter – literally. And everybody deserves to float around in a spa and being pampered silly, from time to time. What is then better than taking a Friday off at a beautiful duck egg blue manor? Can you see the sunwashed terrace, and the glass of sparkling wine?
(Haikko manor, Porvoo, Finland; May 2013)
(Oslo, Norway; April 2013)
Any given Tuesday one could work – or one could have cocoa and cake way up above Oslo.
(Frognerseteren restaurant, Oslo, Norway; April 2013)
Hand over heart – did you really utterly love opera the first time you saw one? Did you melt into one hundred little streams of joy, or did you zone out before the end of the first act, when you realized you didn’t understand Italian or German or Hungarian and forgot to buy the libretto? And when it was all over, did you spend an infinity in your seat while the rest of the theater demanded four bows and fifteen minutes of ovation before you were finally allowed to leave?
Halfway into my third opera, gritting teeth, I remember realizing that the story is the tip of the iceberg. I let go, allowing the music to wash over me, and focused on the details: the intricate weave of notes, the gorgeous and creative stage set-up, the impossible notes sung by the coloratura soprano, and the way the conductor channeled another world through his body. An opera is not to be understood, it is to be felt. And sometimes, just sometimes, an opera house that allows you to walk all over it lowers the treshold – literally.
(Opera house, Oslo, Norway; April 2013)
Yes, the Vikings were famous seafarers, and yes, Norse vikings were the first ones to discover North America. But what about the biologist and anthropologist Heyerdahl, and the polar explorers and scientists Nansen and Amundsen? Did we forget that Norway did not lose her seafaring skills with the Vikings, and has a place to claim next to the great explorer countries that discovered the world as we know it?
Such an interesting facet in a tradition-embracing country. The polar explorer ship Fram does not have a Viking bow, but meter-thick walls to tackle any ice – and a name that only leaves one choice: Forward.
(Fram museum, Oslo, Norway; April 2013)
One courageous, crazy man, his crew, a balsa raft named Kon-Tiki, and 8,000 km across the Pacific Ocean. You’d think that was enough but Thor Heyerdahl had to prove something else, too. So he built another raft, this time out of reed, and sailed across the Atlantic – almost. The Ra I sank right off Barbados. Many would have smoothened it out saying they made it, but not Heyerdahl. He went back, built the Ra II, and this time reached the Caribbean shore.
I stared a long while at the countless ropes and knots that leave the logs and reed ample room to flex but not enough to make the raft disintegrate. It is mindboggling that the Kon-Tiki and the Ra were not built by skill inherited through generations, but by legends, Conquistador drawings of Inca rafts, and Egyptian hieroglyphs. And yet they sailed, further than anyone could imagine.
For Heyerdahl there were no limits, just tools and hard work required to reach the goal, no matter how impossibly far it lies. So why do we waste our time in making limits come to life, when we could use it to reach our goals?
(The Kon-Tiki Museum, Oslo; April 2013)
One Saturday I found myself walking away from the spring sunlight into a dark maze of living pictures. Room after room offered stories displayed on all walls, voices spiraling down from the ceiling. Fishermen fighting the waves at sea, a woman mourning the loss of her dog, and Death paying a breakfast visit.
So many random thoughts swam in the air, intertwined by voices and moving impressions of our beautiful ruthless wonderful world.
Suddenly I stood in front of a most magnificent spruce growing sideways in the dark, its branches whooshing in the wind. How strange to think of all little lives gone by during the lifetime of a single tree. Which is larger than life, then; our sorrows and loves or the sole existence of an ancient tree?
And I walked back into the sunlight feeling very small.
(Eija-Liisa Ahtila’s collected film works at Kiasma museum of contemporary art; Helsinki, Finland, April 2013)
Hungry for Danish design history? Drop by the Designmuseum Danmark in Copenhagen, or stay at the Radisson Blu Royal. The Swan and Egg chairs, as well as the AJ lamp and many other classics, were literally made for this hotel – by Arne Jacobsen. The view from the first skyscraper in Copenhagen is fabulous. So is the front-desk service.
(Copenhagen, Denmark; April 2013)
…and then the sun was gone, as if it never had existed, and all that was left was water, on the streets, in the air, and in the sea.
(Copenhagen, Denmark; April 2013)
After 15 years of layovers at Copenhagen airport, occasional drives through Denmark, and visits to pretty much every other major Danish city, I finally found myself in Copenhagen – with 2 days off.
So what to do? Stroll through the Stroget cobblestone streets; get lost in Illums Bolighus interior design department store; dine at Fiskebaren, an old fish-processing factory-turned trendy hang-out; tour the canals; and squeeze onto the very top of the tapering spiral staircase of the Christianshavn church. That’s hippie freetown Christiania below.
(Copenhagen, Denmark; April 2013)
This blue marble 