The new Munch Museum – Now we love Oslo
COMMENTS
The world has fallen in love with Oslo. Then only the rest of Norway remains.
Internal comments: This is a comment. The commentary expresses the writer’s position.
It’s happening to me Jealous Siddis, Trondheimers and people from Bergen envy their undisguised love for their hometown. Yes, not least from Bergen, of course. No one surpasses the patriotism of the people of Bergen. For eight years we have had a prime minister who never hid that she lived reluctantly in exile behind the castle, even in the Incognito Street, and like the rest of the Bergen diaspora in the city, she could never stop talking about Brann.
The people of Oslo are also happy in their city, but in a more selective, introverted way. It is preferably limited to a neighborhood or to a neighborhood. People on the eastern edge are unsure if they will ever live in the same city as people on the western edge. On the western edge, they are unsure of where the eastern edge is. In the rest of the country, Norway has a prime minister from Oslo. In Oslo, they have got a prime minister from Ris; a white, prosperous enclave at the bottom of Holmenkollen where nearly 50 percent vote Conservative, and Left is larger than Labor. Jonas Gahr Støre is better known in Nordmarka even at Holmlia.
In the Hurdal platform writes off Oslo with some lines, despite this government’s concern about increased inequality. The closure of district schools seems to arouse more care and overcrowded school classes in Oslo’s most vulnerable areas. But that has always been the case. Oslo has to fend for itself and on top of it all get shut up for being Oslo.
That may be the fate of any capital city. It is divided by nature; hated and envied in the rest of the country as the very symbol of power, finance and centralization, while struggling with the big city’s problems just a few metro stops away from the Storting. For a long time, not even Oslo had a beautiful facade to hide behind. There was no historic old town. The center was a street stump which without irony was referred to as a parade street. While Stockholm and Copenhagen could lean back in old greatness, Oslo was the fillet and neglected cousin.
See the pictures from the inside
But something has happened the last couple of decades. Oslo has risen through a rapid and bold urban development which has changed the city’s soul and created a common identity. The expansion of the new district Bjørvika in the inner harbor has with several measures bound the fjord and the city together, but also the city’s inhabitants together. When I was at a press screening in the new Munch Museum on Wednesday, I almost got a different feeling at the thought that Edvard Munch had conceived “Scream” up in Ekebergåsen a few hundred meters behind. There he stood, enjoying, over a hundred years ago and looking out over Bjørvika, where the museum is located, and immediately described in: «Then the sun went down – the sky suddenly turned blood red – I stopped, leaned to the fence tired to death – over it. blue-black fjord and town lay blood and tongues of fire – my friends went on and I was left trembling with anxiety – and I felt that there was a great endless cry through nature. “
The tears press on
Finally, Munch’s art comes home and to its right in a functional and unobtrusive building that is easily accessible to everyone; not only tourists, but also and not least for the inhabitants of Oslo who own this art treasure. Strictly speaking, the municipality owns the collection, but who is not the municipality about its inhabitants? The neighboring opera house is a gem, the National Museum nearby is magnificent, but the two municipal buildings, Munch and Deichman, are the heart of this urban development, mainly funded and operated by the municipality itself. That’s what makes them special. People in Oslo feel it is theirs, something they can use.
The transformation in Oslo has received international attention. The opera roof has become an architectural trendsetter. The fairy tale Deichman has been full of users from day one, especially young people, and recently the library was named the world’s best public library in 2021. Oslo as a concert city and nightlife has passed the big brothers. According to Time Out magazine, the Sagene district is one of Europe’s coolest neighborhoods, and while Norwegian critics are divided in their views on the new Munch, the foreign press is excited and surprised at how modern the expression is.
I have mixed feelings about international publicity. The fjords and Vikings probably still beat everything. Far more important is the long-term urban development that has taken place in Oslo and which has given the city a new pulse. I hear more often that people say they are happy in Oslo in a way that people in Bergen say they are happy in Bergen. A frightening development, some would say, but as a seventh generation Oslo citizen, I think it is high time that we are as proud of Oslo as Erna is of Bergen. The next step is to convince the rest of the country that Oslo is a decent city.