Ekeberg Sculpture Park

This post about my afternoon in Oslo will probably be short because it consists primarily of only visiting one park, Ekeberg Sculpture Park.

Concerning the limited activity, in my defence, I didn’t finish lunch until a few minutes after two in the afternoon, it took 45 minutes or so to walk from the restaurant where I had lunch to the park, and 40 minutes or so to walk from there back to my hotel. So I didn’t have time for much else.

And as it happens, on the way back I serendipitously passed a couple of sites that I took a moment to gander at.

Visiting Ekeberg Sculpture Park

Ekeberg Sculpture Park (Ekebergparken) sits atop an escarpment a short way behind Oslo Fjord. It’s a bit of a tall escarpment for a man of my age to climb, but climb it I did.

The path I took up is reasonably straight. The few steep parts have civilized steps. So, apart from the age-challenging elevation, it wasn’t a tough climb. It requires no mountaineering skills.

As the name implies, it’s a sculpture park. There is one sculpture near the base of the path, but the rest that I saw are all on the plateau at the top of the escarpment.

The Ekeberg Sculpture Park is different in a few ways from the Vigeland Sculpture Park I visited the other day. For one, the Vigeland park is dedicated to a single sculptor, Gustav Vigeland. The sculptures in Ekeberg Park are by different sculptors, none of them named Vigeland. And most, maybe all, of the sculptures here are newer than Vigeland’s works.

For another, the Vigeland sculptures are tightly arranged along a single, straight axis in the containing park, Frogner Park. In Ekeberg Sculpture Park the sculptures are scattered sparsely throughout the large park.

The number of statues is another difference. I read that Vigeland placed almost 200 statues containing about 600 figures in his park. In contrast, one of my guidebooks said that, at the time of writing of that book, there were 35 sculptures in Ekeberg Sculpture Park, with plans to raise that number to 80 eventually. I don’t know how far along they are in their plans, but at even the upper bound, it’s far fewer than the Vigeland count.

Another difference is the style of the sculptures. None of the ones I saw today look anything like the Vigeland sculptures I saw the other day.

“Interesting” Sculptures at Ekeberg Sculpture Park

As I mentioned, there’s one statue near the base of the path leading up to Ekeberg Park. It’s a fairly normal, almost classic sculpture of a fully clothed woman. The only abnormality of it is that the woman has a long tail behind her.

The rest of the sculptures are on or near the escarpment’s upper plateau. And most, but not all of them are stylistically much more out there than the one near the bottom.

First an apology. I forgot to take pictures of the tags giving the name of the sculptor, the title of the piece, and the year it was sculpted. So, you’ll see none of that here. My sincerest apologies to you and, particularly to the artists, for that.

The first sculpture I came to near the entrance to the park is one of the more normal ones. It’s a captivating, almost mesmerizing giant off-white head. Another even more normal one farther on into the park is a woman modestly dressed walking on the path. Apart from being a bit shiny and I think somewhat larger than life, the woman looks realistic. (When I say “larger than life” I definitely mean larger than I am, but also taller than even people of normal height.)

Then things get decidedly weird. For example, there’s a huge brightly coloured polychrome winged biped of a species not of this planet. When I got there, it was just standing there. I turned around and was about to move on when I heard some noise. I turned back to see it was still unmoved and unmoving, but a series of small jets of water shot up from its wings and head.

Another statue in Ekeberg Park looks like a larger-than-life primitive, evil, spiritual sculpture of some culture I’m not familiar with.

One piece is a large number of plain, white underwear of various styles hanging from ropes strung between trees.

There’s an angel sculpture done in white stone. But it’s not your classical Renaissance angel. Portions of her skin are cut away to show her intestines and a couple of her bones. Oh, and her head is a skeleton skull. The wings are intact, though.

Then there’s a piece that consists of two reflective coloured sheets of some material in metal frames. I abhor taking selfies because I think they’re self-indulgent. But you’ll see me in the reflection from that sculpture.

Another sculpture depicts two men. One is standing on his head. The knee of one of his legs is bent, and the other is straight. The other man is standing upright on one foot that’s balanced on the foot of the man standing on his head. Oh, before I forget to mention it, two geese are flying out of the face of the man on top.

There’s also a concave face carved into a large white stone block. To be fair, that one’s quite normal.

I probably forgot some of the sculptures I saw. And I know I didn’t see them all. As I mentioned, the sculptures are sprinkled throughout the park and no single path takes you by them all.

There’s a large map, with a “you are here” circle, near the entrance on the plateau. I saw another one about halfway into the park. But I didn’t see any others. And I didn’t see any paper maps available to take. Maybe I just missed them.

If I were smart, I would have taken a picture of the map so I could have consulted it each time I came across a marked sculpture and then reorient myself to find other close ones from that. However, unfortunately, being smart isn’t my thing.

Other Sculptures in the park:

Ekeberg Park

Even if the sculptures weren’t there, the park itself would have been worth the visit. It’s well-treed, with a few open meadows. The gaps between the trees provide incredible views of the fjord and the city. And in at least one spot there’s a slightly lower plateau with steps and terraces down to it that provides even better views.

Throughout the park, there are signs with a few paragraphs providing information about the Stone Age, Iron Age, and Bronze Age settlements that were on the plateau.

The Way Down

I took a different path down than the one I took up. The one I took down, a much more winding trail, is labelled “The Mesolithic Climb.” The two paths merge near the base of the escarpment.

At various points along the trail, small signs provide a date, rounded to the century, and say that the land there was the shoreline at that time. The sign also provided a paragraph or so of information about that period.

A little way down from the top of The Mesolithic Climb, there’s a clearly labelled spot that is believed to be the place that inspired Edvard Munch to paint The Scream. I don’t get the resemblance. There’s no bridge there. Although they did put up a new-looking, short, thick beam of wood, I assume to make it look like the bridge railing in the painting. There is a river down below, but it’s hard to see from that point. Maybe there were fewer trees back then. Also, modern Oslo wasn’t there in Munch’s time, so it takes a lot to mentally erase that to try to visualize what Munch would have seen.

Of course, Munch had nothing to do with the path being called The Mesolithic Climb. And, technically, it isn’t a climb when taking the trail down, but rather a descent. But I guess they couldn’t change the signs just for me.

The highest sign I saw, not much below the top, was for circa 8,000 BCE. It said that in just 400 years, the land rose almost 20 metres.

The lowest sign I saw, not much above the bottom, was for 2500 BCE.

The Way Back

On the way back, I spotted two ruins beside the sidewalk I was on, one pretty much right after the other, and I stopped briefly to take a look. The first one was Oslo’s original cathedral which was built in the 12th century. The second was the Dominican monastery of St. Olaf, dating from 1239.

The ruins of both consisted of just the very base of the original walls. At no point were the walls taller than a dozen or so of bricks high.

Moving On

I leave for the next stop on this Norwegian mid-morning tomorrow. As I mentioned in my post from this morning, that probably won’t give me enough time to do anything to write about from Oslo tomorrow. I am scheduled to arrive at my next destination mid-afternoon tomorrow, after a more than four-hour bus ride. I’ll probably do a post from there tomorrow.

Beginning with my last trip or two, I started writing city summaries on the last post from that city. I will be back in Oslo the day before I leave to go home. I don’t arrive back until mid-afternoon. But I’ll probably have enough time to do something that will appear here. I’ll write the summary for Oslo then.

I haven’t written that summary or thought much about what I’m going to put in it, but, spoiler: It will probably say I like Oslo and didn’t book enough time here. There may also be a superlative or two in it.

Huh. As often happens when I say at the start that a post will probably be short, this ended up a lot longer than I expected. Sorry about that.