Moose and Nålbinding

It's been a good weekend!  After coffee hour on Friday, some friends and I went to Mela again, where there was more cool music.  I realized that I forgot to say some stuff about Mela after all that museum-ness: they had bubbles and rainbows there too:

It's a bubble within a bubble-I tried my hand at this, though I was not as skilled.
Saturday was Verdens Kuleste Dag (literally-World's Coolest Day)-a festival within Akershus Fortress.  This included such wonders as a cabbage sculpture, with strange spiral-y cauliflower...

 ...and an incredibly cute puffball...

...to free food!!  The veggie tent had apple juice, cauliflower soup, lamb hash in cabbage, and rose-flavored ice cream.  I also had salmon soup, popcorn cooked in a bathtub, and hot chocolate.  And I also had...

Moose!-which was very tasty.  Around this area, they also had woodcarving; arming small children with sharp knives and wood.  There was blood, but no one panicked like it would have happened in the US.  There's a lot more of the "let the children hurt themselves and learn" attitude here than at home, where we aren't even allowed proper (read: non-safety) scissors in school.  Anyway, there were also a bunch of reenactors from the Oseberg ship museum showing wood chopping, braiding, tablet weaving, and nålbinding.  Tablet/card weaving was something I had seen at the ship museum, but was unsure about how it actually worked.

The warp threads are threaded through holes in these wooden cards, and the way different colors are arranged in the tablets forms the basis for the pattern.  After the weft is passed through, all of the cards are turned 1/4, and it's repeated.  This was used most often to make trim. 
Also, I learned how to do (really basic) nålbinding.  Nålbinding (meaning needle knotting) is older than knitting or crochet, and produces a thick fabric that won't unravel even when it gets a hole, since the yarn is knotted together.  It's also different from knitting, etc. because you have to make it with short pieces of yarn and a single needle.  I think I was taught the Oslo stitch (go figure), one of the simplest techniques.  Nålbinding was used to make hats, mittens, socks, etc.  I just made a long chain:

I was taught how to do it by using my thumb to hold the loops, which helps in maintaining even tension.  A warmer fabric is made by drawing the loops tighter, which is (surprise, surprise) more difficult.  Anyway, if you're curious, here's a good explanation showing the way that I was taught: http://www.dilettante.info/nalbindingpages/osloprimer/osloprimer1.htm
Today I went hiking around the lake; there are lots of side-trails.  Saw some mushrooms, thistles, and cliffs.

Concerts, Viking ships, and a class

Last Wednesday, my buddy group went on a walking tour through Akerhus Fortress, which is a big stone castle (I am going to count this as my 2nd non-official castle-I need to see an actual castle sometime) built to protect Oslo from sea attacks.  It had arrow slits, a drawbridge, and cannons with angry-looking handles.

Then, we went to Rådhusplassen (city hall) to hear the Oslo Philharmonic orchestra play Beethoven's 9th Symphony.

The next day was registration help for classes, which involved lots of waiting in lines, and I am on the waiting list for Marine Ecology.  I joined another buddy group, where we went to the Ethnographic Museum owned by the University and engaged in some good old fashioned rites-of-passage involving face-paint.    Friday was International Coffee Hour, where they give out free biscuits (aka cookies!) 
On Saturday, I went with some friends to check out the museums on Bygdøy peninsula.  The Vikingskipshuset (Viking ship museum) is free for UiO students, and we spent a lot of time there-tons of awesome pictures!
The museum is set up with vaulted ceilings, with 3 main wings for each ship, and a 4th for the artifacts found with-no gold or jewelry, since all the ships were robbed in the past. There are 3 ships there-the Oseberg, Gokstad, and Tune ships, all from ~9th-10th century CE. 
This is the Oseberg ship, which was buried with two women.  This is the most intact and decorated ship, and the first one you see.  It's difficult to convey the size in pictures; the museum has little stairs in the corners where you can go up and take pictures of the entire hall.

This is the Tune ship, which did not fare as well, since it wasn't buried in clay.

This is the Gokstad ship, which, unlike the Oseberg (which was most likely a pleasure cruise ship) was built to travel, and is thus much sturdier.

This is the burial chamber from the ship, which would have been placed behind the mast (on actual voyages, there weren't any sleeping places on board, although tents could be set up on the nearest convenient shore).

In the artifact hall there was a cart, fabrics, cooking equipment, and sledges found with the burials.  Before you enter the museum proper, there is a balcony where the remains of the Oseberg women and Gokstad man rest.  The mounds were excavated in the 1880s and early 1900's, and in 1928 and 1948, public opinion was for reburial of the bodies in "waterproof" caskets.  In 2007, both were reopened in order to check on conditions.  In both cases, water or condensation got in, and now, the bones are kept here, available for research.  Here is me:

Then, I went to the Norsk Sjøfarts museum (Maritime Norway museum), where there was stuff about different types of boat traditions in different areas.  Also, they had a painting collection-interestingly, although Norway has a lot of coast, most "national pride" artwork is focused on landscapes.
On Sunday, it was sunny, and some friends and I went to the islands, where I could happily spend many hours staring at stuff in tidepools.  I did not go swimming in the fjord, but I did go swimming in the Sognsvann lake later this week (chilly).
On Monday I went to go find out about my biology class, and I found a lot of dioramas in the biology building, including this mini wooly mammoth, which made me happy:

Found out that I should go to the first lecture, but that I should sign up for another class in case I do not get in, so I signed up for Intro to Runology (I feel like Harry Potter!) because I could.  Unfortunately, signing up for that class took place on Tuesday morning, and the first seminar was on Tuesday morning.  So, only one class this week!  Here are the keyboards in the library, which are arranged slightly differently, so instead of capitalizing, I kept adding >.

Class on Wednesday was cool-Objects and Identities in the Viking Age.  I signed up for my presentation/paper-on ships-Yes!  Yesterday I did laundry (which involved wandering around a grocery store too early in the morning because I realized that I had bought fabric softener instead of detergent).  Later that night, it was downtown to Rådhusplassen for the Mela world music festival (and bubbles).  It was decorated slightly differently, with green elephants this time, and I listened to some Moroccan rappers.

Now, to Coffee Hour!

Buddy groups and statues

So, after my last post, I later went to Villa Eika (first time on the campus!) to try a Norwegian waffle, which looks like this:

They are thinner and less bread-like than Belgium waffles, and what's smeared on this one is a tart jelly, which is perfect with the sweet waffle.  Tasty!  The line was really long to get phone cards, so a group of us went off into central Oslo looking on a successful quest for a SIM card.  Later, I met up with someone to go see the Opera house in Oslo, which is big and glass and looks like this:

You can walk up that slanted roof to the very top (it's made of marble, so I would not want to try this in the winter), where there is a great view across the city, islands, and the fjord-which, by the way, is a fun word to say, much better than "bay."

On Monday, we got information packets, then met our buddy groups, with whom I experienced the joys of walking around campus, after which we headed downtown to listen to some speeches and some epic music:

Today, there was a scavenger hunt, part of which involved taking all of our removable clothes and tying them together to form the longest line possible-I'm happy to say that we beat the record!  Then, we engaged in a popular Norwegian pastime-barbecuing on the grass using disposable grills.

Later, the groups were supposed to meet up again for beer tasting, but I got lost and ended up at Vigeland Statue park, so decided to see that instead.  I followed an English tour group for a while, and learned that this is part of the fountain that you don't normally see (it's being renovated right now, so the water is off):

The fountain is called the Circle of Life (insert Lion King music here...), and there are panels along the outside showing different stages in life, including some skeletons and swimming babies.
I took a ton more pictures, because it was really neat, but here is part of the giant tower of people:

But I personally liked looking at the larger statues arranged in rays around the tower, like this one:

They all show different parts of the human experience, from love to anger, hope to survival, and I thought it was really amazing.