Food and Stave churches

Wow-another 2 weeks.  I need to keep doing these more frequently, because I took 811 pictures since my last post, and this makes it so hard to choose which pictures to put on this blog!
All right, here goes:
Two Thursdays ago (before the last post), was Elvelangs i fakkellys, an evening walk along the river that flows through Oslo.  This was very cool, walking along a path lit by open lamps with groups of musicians or art pieces every few meters.  Lots of these pictures are fuzzy, but here's some of the art:

These are paper stars stuck on sticks on the side of a hill.  Why?-I have no idea, but it looked beautiful.

On that Saturday, I went on a guided tour of Akershus Slott (Akershus castle) with a group from the history faculty.  This was really cool-the original castle was built in 1299, but most of that is gone after lots of additions and construction by later Danish and Swedish kings or governors, most notably in the 1600's.  There is dungeon, secret passages, a crypt, and angry peasant ghosts though, so it had all those wonderful castle-y things.

This is the most "medieval"-looking of the rooms, since this was restored in the 1930's (I think) to what it would have looked like when the castle was new.  This is cool stuff to think about, especially with everything we're talking about in my Conservation class-how restoring something is inherently subjective, since every object (or room) has a long history during which aspects have been modified.  What is the authentic room-this imagining of the medieval past based on wall-paintings from another building, or how the room was used for grain storage for decades?  Neat stuff.
Last Monday, I had a class downtown, and since it was a gorgeous day, I wandered around by the royal palace.  There were, of course, the obligatory guards in big plumed hats, but I think something else was going on, since there was a camera/news-person section on the side.  I stuck around for a while, but left since who knows how long before-hand those people congregate.

The black strip is probably for Princess Ragnhild, who died in September.
Next to the palace are the royal gardens.  The leaves are changing color here, so it was all very pretty.

Also, you just have to love a park where there are signs like these!

Last weekend was also the Fårikålfest-a group was trying to break the world record for serving the most fårikål (a traditional Norwegian dish made of mutton and cabbage).  This meant 2 days of free meat, and dish soap!  This is what is looks like:

It was really tasty-you can't tell from this picture, but there were peppercorns tucked in those layers of cabbage, so there were spicy bites in this. 

Then, last Sunday I hosted an Apple Pie Party-basically, I asked people to bring food that they make at home, and I would make apple pie.
Here's all the deliciousness:

There were dumplings, Japanese-style curry, arretjeskake (cocoa-cake), mossakka (pancakes), and spicy cauliflower-all very tasty!  And the apple pie:

Previously that week, there had been a solar event that caused higher-than normal Aurora Borealis levels, meaning that they theoretically could be seen from Oslo, so a friend and I hiked out to try and see them.   Unfortunately, the weather decided to not cooperate and rain, so all we could see was rain and creepy shadows.
 Great weather this week, leading to pictures like this:

So, I decided yesterday to visit the Norske Folkemuseum before the weather turns.  This is a cultural history museum on Bygdøy, near the Vikingskipshuset.  It has buildings from several regions in Norway, from urban apartments to rural farmhouses.  In the summer season, there are many activities outside in all the buildings, like a living history museum, but it's less crowded now.  I took a ton of pictures, so I'll be selective and show you probably the most famous building there: the Gol stavkirke.

A stavkirke (stave church) is a special kind of architecture, based on load-bearing pillars, from the Middle Ages, and they're very rare (only 28 left in Norway).  This one was originally from Gol, Norway, but it was moved to the present site in 1885 by the Fortidsminneforeningen (a preservation society) and King Oscar II (a Swedish king who wanted to improve hist public opinion).  Then, the church became a national symbol in 1907, after Norway's independence from Sweden.It's undergoing restorations now, so one can't go inside the church, but around in the covered walkways all around the stave church.
Next week: UNICA!