Recently me and Lorna took a short trip to Norway to see her favourite band Anthony and the Johnson's play. We were only there for two nights but we tried to have a good stroll around Oslo in the short time we had to try and get a feel of the place. My friend Jeanette Lee said to make sure we visit the City Hall ! From the outside this huge dark brown modernist building isn't particularily beautiful by any means though it is certainly imposing looking, however on the inside it is a different story. It is full of light and color, a total contrast to it's rather drab exterior. (Not unlike the new British Library building in London.
The central part of the building is a huge hall, this is where the Nobel prizes are presented, and all around it are many ante rooms which are decorated with the most wonderful murals depicting aspects of norwegian life, stretching from floor to ceiling they are painted on a quite epic scale.
But even though they are massive they still remain feeling very human and all about the people and all the things they get up to in every aspects of their lives.
There is no pomp here at all and no references to kings and governent and power, if you saw these paintings in a building from the Soviet Bloc or China you might sceptically consider them as propaganda as if representations of people living together in harmony could only be a lie.
But here you believe that these pictures were painted with the best of intentions, and you feel that this City hall was planned to make the people of Oslo feel that it and the whole city was theirs.
The gig was great and the people of Oslo were very friendly. The hotel put on a buffet supper in the evening and there was a girl who worked there who was so friendly and welcoming to everyone that came in that it really did fill up your heart, the giant murals were incredible, as was the wailing American singer at the Spektrum arena - but she was by far the greatest thing in Oslo.
