#FBF: The Phallic Frogner Park (Oslo, Norway)

I’m starting a new Friday theme called #FBF where I flashback to less recent travels. I’m not usually good at structured blogging, but let’s keep our fingers crossed, shall we?

Let’s take a break from the story deluge from my recent travels to Budapest and Vienna to talk about a little sculpture park in Oslo that I visited in 2015. The Frogner Park more specifically houses the Vigeland Sculpture Park is in the northwest corner of Oslo.

After I’d booked my plane ticket to Scandinavia, I went to see a play called “Posterity” at the Atlantic Theatre Company, an off-Broadway theatre company here in New York City. It was about Gustav Vigeland’s experience sculpting the playwright Henrik Ibsen (also a native Oslo’er). Spoiler alert: It wasn’t easy. Ibsen was old and he wouldn’t sit still, as this was right before he died. I knew I now had to go check out the Vigeland sculptures when I was in Oslo.

It’s a massive park that you could likely spend a day in. At the entrance to the park is a statue of Vigeland with the dates that he lived. Once you enter the park, you see beautiful trees and landscaping leading up to the steps that lead up to a monolith, a pillar fashioned out of sculpted naked human bodies. It’s a sight to be scene.

There are other sculptures of naked bodies on the steps leading towards the centerpiece of the park, too, as well as a fountain that seems to be held up by these oddly shaped bodies.

 

These sculptures are both shocking and beautiful. If you have a beautiful day to spare in Oslo, it’s worth a look (and it’s also free!). The Oslo Bymuseum the Vigeland-Museet are also in the park if you have time to check those out, too. And lastly, I noticed a statue of Abraham Lincoln and when I Googled this I learned that the people of North Dakota had given Norway this statue of Lincoln because at one point one third of the population of North Dakota was from Norway.

Frogner Park is beautiful way to spend an afternoon if you find yourself with nothing specific to do in Oslo.