oslo in the summertime

a little travel log

I met some Texans in the airport who took to me quickly, and accepted me in for day-drinking and playing cards during our shared layover in London. Madeline, one of the Texans, turned to me and said, “I’m so happy to hear English in an American accent,” when we were in line to check our bags.

We played some game that’s a French riff on Uno inexplicably called “you’re the asshole,” the rules of which I’m still unclear on, besides understanding at one point that I was The President and that counting up from 3-4-5-6-7 gets to be difficult when you haven’t slept in a day. The Texans learned about the game from a French carpenter named Clement on their work-away in the north of Norway. I was charmed by the photos of the sparse olden-times decor, wooden beds from a prior century, and the hand-built central hearth of the a-frame barn they stayed in for two weeks while weeding gardens and painting shelves. I was charmed by the fact that Madeline’s husband was a southern boy who did the charming southern boy thing by going by his middle name, which was his mother’s maiden name. McClain, Scottish.

We talked about America, working with our hands, and the importance of pursuing art in a desolate world. They were musicians. I’m a painter. One of the boys liked working with his hands, which is an art too. She had quit social media and hadn’t even posted about her marriage or her courthouse wedding. Badass.

Door County, not Norway actually

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While they were on work-away I was having the time of my life in Oslo; biking around the peninsula looking at the king’s royal cows and getting sunburnt, communing with the angels and demons in Munch paintings, staying in the sauna until I couldn’t handle it, and of course jumping into the freezing cold fjord. I hiked up by the ski jump with a new friend to a cafe on a trail that felt like it went uphill both ways, to share a cardamom bun and cinnamon roll from the ski lodge. The woods felt like fairyland, and each flat rock blanked with moss suggested a bed for elves, the black tar wood cabins stood as if they emerged from the earth instead of being built on top of it. The rock in Norway has that feel too - not a gradual building up, but a sudden emergence upwards from the earth. It’s dramatic and enchanted land, made all the more so by the fog and overcast which by contrast made the foliage appear an even more vivid green.

Norway is just big Minnesota, where I grew up. I was proud to tell locals, at times, about the sauna and cabin my Norwegian-Finnish carpenter dad built with his bare hands up north back home, and how this meant I was like them and they were like me. When Madeline the Texan brought up Door County I nearly leapt, because that Wisconsin peninsula had crossed my mind for the first time in four years a week prior while I’d been hiking up in the hills in Oslo- how they were much alike, how “we got Scandinavia back home.” Although not the never-ending sunlight, maternity policies, brown cheese, and ancient ruins. Those are Norway’s.

To save money I’d booked a bnb in someone’s apartment. I lucked the fuck out. I made quick friends with my room mate, angelic Denise, model, actress, artist. One of the nights I returned home tipsy she had been up late in the living room talking with a friend, Charlie, from an acting workshop; a New Yorker, a theater-appreciator type, who’d gone abroad 30 years ago and never turned back. When I’m tipsy all I really want to do is talk about Bob Fosse and eat ice cream… God delivered!!

Charlie told me back in the 70s or 80s, the day of his flight back to New York after a year of travels he decided to instead take the train to Copenhagen. He told me, “It was an impulsive decision… one that formented after months of contemplation.” Copenhagen was heaven on earth to Charlie but eventually he had to go to Oslo, because it was easier for students to secure visas at the time. He went to Oslo with the hopes of returning to Copenhagen. But he never went back. I asked him why.

He said, “I realized there was no going back to Copenhagen. The friends, the lover, they were gone. The Copenhagen I knew was gone. I didn’t want to face that. So I stayed here in Oslo, I think it’s worked out.”

I wish I would have thought that before trying to return to LA last year. Because it’s true.

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Denise lent me her bike and showed me the magazines she’s starred on the covers of since she was 17- and I couldn’t believe when I saw in the corner, the one where she wore a pale pink lipstick, that it was published in 2005. I had thought she was a decade younger than me, oops lol. She showed me her spreads from the Italian alps modeling cashmere and told me at the time modeling was seen as embarrassing. Now look at us, every fifth grader dreams of being an influencer hawking products.

We went to hot yoga together where the instructor assumed, naturally, I spoke Norwegian (I am this blonde, however, #flex, because before this moment I felt my face was “americanized” fully), and we also went to a little local bar with mismatched cutlery and colorful bakelite school chairs.

Denise is becoming a tram driver. I think that’s the best thing in the world.

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I came to Oslo to see my best friend, and one of my only friends, from high school get married, Ellie. She met her Norwegian husband in Madrid while teaching English, and survived the covid lock-downs together in their little Spanish apartment in the early days of their relationship. They are a match that makes me believe fate is watching out for each and every one of us.

The day of the wedding was incredibly foggy. As I rounded the hill to get to the venue a massive harp appeared from the ether… like Twilight. Birds emerged from the bushes during the vows to cackle and whoop in the air above our heads, in such a way that myself and the other guests assumed they were released from a bag by someone unseen - no, it was just ordination by nature. Ellie looked so beautiful, and my favorite photo from the day is her husband behind her holding up the back of her dress-skirts, just beaming, as they walked through the door up the stairs into the main venue. We listened to speeches, we danced all night. I held court at the cigarette table without even smoking very much.

Here’s a great wedding tradition, by the way. At the dinner, when the groom gets up to use the restroom, all of the groomsmen run in a circle around the venue to line up to to give the bride a kiss on the cheek before he gets back. It’s very slapstick and looney tunes. Much better than a garter dance.

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In Oslo in the summertime, the sun only kinda sets around 3 am, and rises back up again very soon after. After closing out the dance floor and crashing into the bed at my hotel, the light came back in, meaning it was time to put caviar-in-a-tube (literally liquid gold, I know that sounds nuts) on oat bread and down black coffee after black coffee for breakfast.

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I was sad to leave it. I’m ready to start my life over, however, and during this month abroad - and, I didn’t even talk about Portugal, Spain, France - some things became clear. For most of May I mostly felt an itching to put down the never-ending playing, to stop the record, smash the wine glass and halt the party, because it’s time to roll up my sleeves and start working. On the painting, on the life. There’s too much dissatisfaction in putting it off. And after this trip, when I’ve had my fill of tapas and brackish water, there’s little else left to do.