The no-expense-spared Opera House in Oslo, sloping like an iceberg into the waves, opened in 2008 to international acclaim, at a cost of 4.4 billion kroners.
The Oslo Opera House is not just a cultural center, but an inviting public space which draw visitors in their thousands. The Opera House is today the cornerstone of a dynamic, increasing new residential, cultural and commercial district, emerging in the old industrial port area of Bjørvika.
The Oslo Opera House from above. Photo: birdseyepix.com/Christopher Hagelund.
The modern structure has pride of place on the waterfront, just a five-minute walk from Oslo S (Central) train station, out of the south entrance and across Dronning Eufemias gate. The award-winning design by Norwegian architects Snøhetta is a truly Nordic concoction, built to resemble snow fields and floating ice, with fabulous acoustics. Norway’s largest venue for opera and ballet has three stages, with seating for 1,364 in the main auditorium.
The main auditorium in the Oslo Opera House with seating for 1,364.
The Opera House was deliberately planned so that even non-opera-goers could find something to enjoy. The sweeping slopes of Italian Carrara marble flank the main bulk of the building, allowing the public to stroll onto the roof, sunbathe, picnic – in short, to claim the building as their own. There is also a gift shop, bar, brasserie and Argent restaurant for fine dining.
Birdseye view to the Oslo Opera House
The harborside location and radical design have lent the Opera House two unusual features. Much of the Building is below sea level – orchestra members in the main auditorium actually sit 15 meters (50ft) “underwater”. It’s also the only opera house in the world to have its own underwater sea defences, a barrier to protect it should the Oslo – Copenhagen car ferry ever drift off course.
The Stunning Opera House in Oslo, written by Tor Kjolberg
In 1814 Norway was emancipated from Denmark after 500 years’ existence as a Danish province. It was necessary for the young nation to create its own national literature, art and music.
In 1849 a large cultural festival was organized at the Christiania Theatre where traditional Norwegian fairy tales, folk art and folk music were brought into the limelight. It was at this event the legendary violinist Ole Bull played his new folk music-inspired rhapsody “Seterbesøket” (The Visit to the Summer Farm) with the famous “Seterjentens søndag” (The Dairy Maid’s Sunday).
Norwegian violinist and composer Ole Bull
Bull also posed as a model for the fiddler in the famous painting by Tidemann and Gude, “Brudeferd I Hardanger” (The Bridal Procession on the Hardanger fjord). This particular painting concluded the festival as a “tableau vivant”. The ‘tableau vivant’ presented people in the national costumes and was orchestrated around the music of the composer Halfdan Kjerulf.
Despite the fact that this festival had a distinct national romantic flavor, it is evident that even at that time Norwegian artists and performers viewed their work in a wider and more international perspective. For instance, a tableau called the “Neapolitan Fisher Family” was included in the festival.
Adolph Tideman & Hans Gude: Bridal Procession on the Hardangerfjord (National Gallery, Oslo)
Moreover, a significant part of the very best Norwegian literature and music is created in the cross-section between patriotic love for Norwegian artifacts and the admiration for exotic international impulses. The famous playwright Henrik Ibsen, for instance, makes his Peer Gynt character visit ‘everyone’ from the ultimate Norwegian “Dovregubbens hall” (Hall of the Mountain King) to the young exotic Arabic girl Anitra. A parallel range is found in Edvard Grieg’s well known composition to this play. In fact, Henrik Ibsen gad to a large degree moved away from the national romantic ideas when he wrote Peer Gynt, and of which Peer Gynt is a caricature, but figures like “Dovregubben” crept into people’s consciousness and became genuine national symbols.
Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen
A quarter of a century later, when the artists of Kristiania (now Oslo) met in 1874 for a masquerade ball, the theme for the ball was the wedding of Dovregubben’s daughter and the southern European Prince Carnival. The guests consisted of Norwegian super-national mountain and forest creatures like dwarfs, gnomes, gremlins and huldras (the latter is a female underground figure) as well as Southern European guests like Bacchus, Columbine, Harlequin and Pierrot.
This colorful meeting between north and south is beautifully captured for the occasion by Johan Svendsen’s sparkling music in which two Norwegian danced, “springer” (a running dance), and Brudeslått (bridal tune) are combined with a popular Neapolitan song.
Norwegian composer Johan Halvorsen
So it is in the cross-section between the national and international that Svendsen composed one of the most inspired masterpieces, “Norsk Kunstnerkarneval” (Norwegian Artists’ Carnival).
Christiania Theatre, by architect Christian Heinrich Grosch
This is also true of his colleague Johan Halvorsen who wrote the piece “Entry of the Boyard” which has distinct Norwegian Mountain King style depicting the march into Bucharest by Russian warriors.
Feature image (on top): From the Johan Halvorsen Music Festival 2017
A Short Introduction to Norwegian Literature, Art and Music, written by Tor Kjolberg
Master cabinet maker Carl Hansen founded his company in Odense, Denmark in 1908. His son Holger took over and initiated a partnership with then-unknown designer Hans J. Wegner. Their collaboration continued throughout Wegner’s historic career.
Today, third generation Knud Erik Hansen, runs the family business. For over a decade, Carl Hansen & Søn manufactured furniture designed by great artists such as Tadao Ando, Mogens Koch, Kaare Klint, Ole Wanscher, Poul Kjærholm and Hans J. Wegner
Hans J. Wegner
As a driving force behind ‘Danish Modern’, Hans J. Wegner helped change the general public’s view of furniture in the 1950s and 1960s. One of his most iconic designs is his Shell Chair.
Hans J. Wegner’s Shell chair
The PK1 dining chair for instance, designed by Poul Kjærholm in 1955, is an early example of Kjærholm’s unique ability to combine steel with organic materials. The design has an understated look which requires skilled craftsmanship and an in-depth understanding of the inherent nature of the materials.
Carl Hansen & Søn is known as the world’s largest producer of architect Hans J. Wegner furniture that is nearly all made from wood that has grown in sustainable Danish forests. The 165 passionate employees ensure that every piece leaving the Danish production site is a masterpiece of precision.
Norwegian self-taught photographer Anders Beer Wilse (1865-1949) immigrated to America in 1884 and worked as a railroad engineer and cartographer from Minnesota to Washington. Norway’s most famous photographer left behind a cultural treasure consisting of more than 200,000 documented photographs of his life’s work.
What Wilse observed, he wanted his countrymen to enjoy as well – from poor fishermen to royals. He has played an important role in the shaping of Norway’s national self-image. He was born in Flekkefjord, Vest-Agder and raised in Kragerø, Telemark. Having received his technical degree, he immigrated to America in 1884 and lived in Seattle from 1892 to 1900, where he in 1897 established his own photographic business.
Pioneer photographer Anders Beer Wilse
Expeditions in Montana included photographing Grasshopper Glacier, containing billions of entombed locusts, and the discovery of Mount Wilse.
On a return visit home to Norway aboard the emigrant ship Geyser in 1888, which collided with the Thingvalla and sank, he nearly drowned. The Wilse family returned to Norway around 1900, where he became a world-class photographer. Long before the ‘selfie’ became a term, people associated with the press knew what a “Wilse” was. Already in the 1920s the meaning was cemented: it was a photograph stretching itself towards technical and compositional perfection.
Anders Beer Wilse: Struggle for Life
Wilse left a legacy of early photographs documenting this period of unprecedented growth and change in Seattle’s history, including views of the Alaskan Gold Rush of 1896 – 1899, but he is perhaps most famous for documenting Norway’s landscape and its natural and urban life. He also worked as a photographer for many major Norwegian companies – among them Norsk Hydro.
Anders Beer Wilse: Odda, Hardanger, 1907
Today, six institutions manage various parts of Wilse’s formidable life work. The photo material was in 2014 incorporated in Norway’s documentary heritage, which is a part of the UNESCO’s Memory of the World register.
Anders Beer Wilse: Norwegian author Knut Hamsun next to an unidentified man on tractor, June 1929
Anders Beer Wilse died 83 years old 20 February 1949.
Anders Beer Wilse: Testing Cedar River Water
Those who did not get the pleasure to meet him, will, in his two books, Life of a Young Norwegian Pioneer (1936) and Norwegian Men and their Country (1943), receive an unpolished view of him as a man and a lively commentary to his life’s work: A national anthem in pictures.
Feature image (on top) The SDkøyen Line, Oslo 1940 The Beauty of Norway From Behind a Camera, written by Tor Kjolberg
The British government has published a paper stating there should be no border posts or immigration checks between Ireland and Northern Ireland after Brexit. Disruption of trade should also be kept to a bare minimum. Perhaps Britain has something to learn from the Norway – Sweden border?
Swedish officials in EU have warned the British government of long border queues, diesel laundering and smuggled goods when being dragged into the Brexit debate. Norway has the closest possible trading relationship with EU without actually being a part of the bloc. There were 229,286 checks on crossing vehicles in 2016.
Map of Norway and Sweden
Sharing a border of 1,640 km, with close to 80 crossings between Norway and Sweden demonstrates the challenges Northern Ireland and Ireland may face in the future. U. K.’s vision of a frictionless Northern Irish border will be difficult to achieve. One EU politician even described it as ‘fantasy’.
Northern Ireland exported more than €3 billion worth of goods to Ireland in 2016 and many businesses have complex supply chains.
Border force officials on both sides of the Sweden-Norway border demonstrate their concerns when surveying battered cars and vans driven by smugglers of alcohol, cigarettes and drugs, caught by the customs. Norway has chosen to impose high tariffs in such goods.
The old bridge at Svinesund, one of the borders between Sweden and Norway border Photo: Heiko Junge / NTB scanpix
However, with Norwegian-Swedish trade links worth €18.6 billion annually, there is a huge economic and political interest in keeping trade and traffic flowing between the two countries.
Customs check in Norway
Within the EU, citizens can load up as much alcohol as their vehicles can safely carry and legally drive it over internal borders, as long as they can credibly claim it is for private consumption. Not so in Norway. Even if Norwegians and Swedes have enjoyed open-border travel since before the EU came into existence, Norway, not an EU member, has restrictions on import of cigarettes and alcohol.
The new Svinesund bridge
Streamlined border checks are now possible through technological advances. So called automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) scanners are used in both stationary form and on Norwegian police vehicles. However, sometimes at peak-times there may be queues of a couple of hours at on-site border checks even with technical equipment.
Nothing tp declare
Norwegian customs seized 47,000 liters of spirits and 322,000 liters of beer in the first half of 2017.
Passing the Norwegian-Swdish border 17 June 2015
The two Scandinavian neighbors tightened travel document checks after the large inflow of migrants into Europe in 2015. Now, after the number of arrivals subsided, passport checks are rare.
Svinesund Bridge between Sweden and Norway
While Sweden joined EU in 1995, Norway chose not to join after a referendum in 1994. Doing so would cost the country control over its productive fishing grounds, was one of the reasons. Sweden and Norway were united under one head of state until 1905.
There are reasons to believe that the EU’s outer border running between neighbors with close ties will soon be echoed on the island of Ireland, where U.K.-governed Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland meet.
However, Britain has said it does not favor electronic surveillance on its border with Ireland. But questions are now being asked about what form the border should take, and what the various options would mean for business, political security and smuggling. Ireland is keen to avoid any hard border with Northern Ireland.
Sweden-Norway border post
Despite flattering remarks from Belfast, officials in Sweden and Norway are wary about being dragged into the Brexit debate, especially when the U. K. last August presented a paper on the issue stating it wanted not only to avoid border checks, but also to rule out any border infrastructure at all — for fear it would become a target for dissident republicans.
Svinesund customs
One lesson from Norway is, however, that even with the Scandinavian country’s close ties to the bloc, border checks are necessary.
Can Brexit Britain Learn Something From the Sweden – Norway Border? written by Tor Kjolberg
2016 was a record year for Norwegian export, and 2017 is likely going to be even better. Norwegian seafood exporters shipped fisheries and aquaculture products with a total value of NOK 91.6 billion (USD 10.8 billion, EUR 10.2 billion) last year.
Norway has also come up with an ambitious plan to dramatically increase its seafood exports to China, and expects the trade to be worth 10 billion yuan ($1.45 billion) by 2025. Poland, France and Denmark remain the largest buyers of Norwegian salmon, while Japan, the United States and Thailand are Norway’s main markets for trout.
EU was last year the biggest market for Norwegian seafood
A growing global middle class will probably request more fish, and the EU was last year again the biggest market for Norwegian seafood with export to the bloc totaling NOK 61.3 billion (USD 7.2 billion), up 23 percent from 2015.
“2016 was a fantastic year for Norwegian seafood exports. Exports increased by 23 percent and passed NOK 90 billion for the first time. Sixty-seven percent of exports, measured by value, went to Europe. Norway is highly dependent on the European market,” said Renate Larsen CEO of the Norwegian Seafood Council.
According to NSC’s director for the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong, Sigmund Bjørgo, the plan for increased export to China is based on the consumers’ preference for Norwegian seafood.
Norwat will export seafood to EU totaling NOK 61.3 billion (USD 7.2 billion), up 23 percent from 2015
The council, which comes under the country’s Ministry of Trade, Industry and Fisheries, said it aims to see Norwegian salmon consumption reach 156,000 metric tons in China and Norwegian arctic cod consumption to reach 40,000 tons by 2025, along with increased consumption of other species including halibut, mackerel, lumpfish, snow crab and king crab.
Norwegian salmon sold in a Moscow supermarket
By 2050, revenues from seafood exports could have passed today’s oil and gas revenues at a good margin, according to forecasts from Sintef.
In total, Norway exported seafood to 146 countries last year.
World-renowned artist/photographer Roger Ballen exhibits his works in Oslo. And for one night only you can experience his mesmerizing universe in an old circus tent at Aker Brygge.
The Roger Ballen exhibition will take place in Willas Contemporary in Oslo from 14 October through 11 November. The artist will be visiting Oslo from 11 to 14 October.
Roger Ballen portrait
On Friday, 13 October, Ballen and the Norwegian sound artist Timon Botez will present a selection of the artist’s photographs combined with movies, projections and a very distinctive soundscape in an entirely new way in an old circus tent raised at Aker Brygge, a short distance from the Willas Contemporary.
The circus tent event will be a world premiere of the virtual reality version of Ballenesque, produced by OONI and is a result of close collaboration with Uncontaminated Oslo.
A sales exhibition will open to the public on Saturday 14 October.
Roger Ballen carries a PhD in Geology and was born in New York in 1950. He has worked and lived in Johannesburg, South Africa since the early 1980’s.
Rpger Ballen: Brian with pig
‘The images I create, I create not to inform. They are much rather meant to be understood as a coherent commentary on the chaos in our incomprehensible world. If I could attach any meaning to the images, they would be nothing more than simple photographs,’ says Ballen.
Roger Ballen: McZaint
Roger Ballen’s work is shown in prestigious institutions around the world and represented in museum collections such as Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France, Tate London, England, The Museum of Modern Art, USA and Louisiana in Denmark.
Roger Ballen: Mirrored top
Ballen’s collaboration with the rap group Die Antwoord has opened his universe to the younger generation – his music video I FINK U FREEKY has received over 100 million views on youtube. He has issued 24 books since 1979, and his next book; BALLENESQUE – A Retrospective, published by Thames and Hudson will be launched at a book signing event at WILLAS contemporary on Saturday, October 14th from 1-3 pm.
Sergeant F. de Bruin, Department of Prisins, emplyee Orange Free State 1992
Willas Contemorary
First opened in Shanghai, Willas Contemporary is an Oslo-based art space showcasing internationally acclaimed artists. The gallery strive to create an edgy, vibrant space where an exchange between culture and commerce can take place. The identity explores the combination of mystery and clarity, the contemporary and the traditional, while always being humble in relation to artists and shows. A study of Willas’ architectural spaces — following the principle of form follows function — were incorporated into the identity system. The logo’s dynamic behavior made it possible to visualize Willas’ unique supervision on artists, shows and talks. The identity allows the art to shine in its entirety, while simultaneously communicating Willas’ invaluable work as the representative.
2 million visitors are drawn annually to the tiny town of Billund in Denmark, the home of the Lego toy company’s theme park and headquarters. Lego House opened last month.
Now you can explore Legoland and visit the LEGO House, which opened last month in the center of Billund, where Lego was invented in 1932. Lego House is a stacked-block formation with a huge Lego-style brick topping it.
Aerial view of Lego House, Billund, Denmark
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be inside a real LEGO House? This is now possible. The LEGO House, also called “Home of the Brick”, is a unique experience house.
Inside the Lego House in Billund
The 130,000-square-foot building has been designed with Lego in mind. The 6.3-million-brick centerpiece is built as homage to Lego’s roots as a wooden toy. The yellow and blue Lego bricks are scaled up to human size, so Lego fans of all ages will get the ultimate Lego experience.
Detail from the Lego House, Billund
The building is made up from 21 white blocks stacked like a pile of the brand’s famous toy building blocks. There are four color-coded experience zones, one for spontaneous creativity, one for roleplay, one testing your dognitive skills and one for playing with emotions. There can kids of all ages learn through play. Inside you can also enjoy the Epic Stairs by the Three of Creativity and the Masterpiece Gallery. In the History Collection you can follow the timeline through the Lego history.
Three of Creativity, The Lego House, Billund
It has been said that the largest block crowning the building, will make the whole building recognizable as a Lego brick from Google Earth. “My vision with this house is to create the ultimate Lego experience which truly unfolds the endless possibilities there are with our bricks and our Lego system of play and have all these experiences in one house, the home of the brick,” said the Lego Group’s majority owner, Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, in his opening speech.
Public area sqiare in Lego House, Billund
The terrace playgrounds are installed with Lego-style toy furnishing; a helicopter, a rocket and chairs and tables linked by staircases that run both inside and outside the blocks, free for the public to explore. Employees stationed in each zone offer suggestions and help small hands find the perfect piece for their creations among some 25 million bricks.
Robots in Mini Chef restaurant, Lego House
The building also includes three restaurants. In one of these, called the Mini Chef restaurant, customers place their orders on Lego bricks and are being served by robots. The food is upscale and health-conscious with adult-friendly ingredients. The kids receive a mini-figure chef toy with their meal.
Red Zone in Lego House, Billund
The building’s nine rooftop playgrounds, ground-level atrium and surrounding parks are free and open to the public, and designed around the idea of Lego House as an indoor town square for the people of Billund and visitors alike. Tickets to the experience zones are DKK 199 per person ($25).
Lego House is located 900 m from Hotel Legoland in Billund town center.
Norway’s Government Pension Fund, also known as the Norwegian Oil Fund, the Norwegian Government Fund Global was established in 1990 to invest the surplus revenues of the Norwegian petroleum sector.
Surpassing the $1 trillion mark, it is now the time to undergo the most drastic changes to its mandates in decades as it ratchets up investment risk and pulls back on the amount of oil money it can spend. The world’s largest sovereign wealth fund was driven by health-care stocks in the second quarter.
Europe’s Unicorn startups 1 billion mark 2015
If the Norweguan fund had been a country, it would rank somewhere ahead of Mexico and behind Indonesia in terms of gross domestic product. In September this year it was worth $192,307 per Norwegian citizen.
The European startup continent 2016
“The Government Pension Fund Global has a long investment horizon. The assessments of the equity share is henceforth based on long term considerations, including assessments of expected return and risk and the state’s ability to carry risk in the Fund. Returns are likely to be lower going forward, as assessed by two separate public commissions and Norges Bank (Bank of Norway). We must adapt to this fact and therefore propose to adjust the return estimate downwards,” Siv Jensen, Norway’s Finance Minister told CNBC via email.
Bank of Norway, Oslo
The fund produced a 7.34 percent gain in the first six months of 2017, according to an investment report. That compares with a 3.33 percent loss in the first half of 2016.
The Norwegian wealth fund has now a larger value than most economies for the first time in its history. The fund holds shares, portfolios of real estate and fixed-income investments. Many companies are excluded by the fund on ethical grounds.
The Norwegian Global Investment Fund’s general responsibility framework
The vast reach of the fund is exemplified by the fact it already invests in 78 countries, owning around 1.3 percent of listed companies worldwide and 2.3 percent of listed companies in Europe. The investment pool serves essentially as an endowment for Norwegian citizens.
Yngve Slyngstad, CEO at Norges Bank Investment Management
“I don’t think anyone expected the fund to ever reach $1 trillion when the first transfer of oil revenue was made in May 1996,” said Yngve Slyngstad, CEO at Norges Bank Investment Management, in a news release.
In fact, The Government Pension Fund of Norway comprises two entirely separate sovereign wealth funds owned by the government of Norway.
Norway’s government pension fund
The Government Pension Fund Norway is smaller and was established in 1967 as a type of national insurance fund. It is managed separately from the Oil Fund and is limited to domestic investments and is therefore a key stock holder in many large Norwegian companies, predominantly via the Oslo Stock Exchange.
Øystein Olsen, governor of Norges Bank
Norway’s central bank governor has been vocal over the past several months in asserting that the government must desist from spending so much of the fund’s assets.
The market value to the Norwegian Government Pension Fund Flobal
“It would be unwise to increase petroleum revenue spending from today’s level even if the [fund] continues to grow,” Øystein Olsen, governor of Norges Bank stated on Thursday, adding that the government risked running a budget deficit of up to 8 percent of GDP (gross domestic product) excluding contributions from oil and shipping.
“Consideration of environmental, social and governance related risk factors may result in divestments from companies where we see elevated long-term risks,# said a spokesman for the fund. “In total, we have divested from 210 companies on these considerations.”
Norway’s Government Pension Fund Surpasses the $1 Trillion Mark, written by Tor Kjolberg
Although there has been a harbor at Copenhagen since the 8th century, until the Middle Ages it was just a simple trading post called Havn (Harbor), albeit one with an important geographical position.
Havn was within easy access of Skåne (Sweden), then part of Denmark, across the Sound, and a handy halfway point on the trade route between the growing medieval cities of Roskilde and Lund.
Børsen (The Stock Exchange) Copenhagen
Its fortune changed dramatically, however, in 1167, when King Valdemar I commanded the local bishop Absalon of Roskilde, to fortify Havn in order to protect it against Wendic pirates.
Archbishop Absalon of Roskilde (Painting, Roskilde Dome)
Absalon built a fortress on the spot where the Parliament building now looms. Copenhagen was on the way to becoming Denmark’s biggest and most important town. The fortress became Christiansborg, borg meaning castle.
Centuries later, it remains the seat of Danish politics, housing the Folketing (Parliament).
During the long reign of Kristian IV (1588-1648), Copenhagen solidified its role as the country’s seat of power. The visionary town planner strengthened the city’s overseas trade links, enhanced the city’s military might with a huge defensive fortification and made it the country’s economic center by buiding Børsen, said to be the oldest stock exchange in Europe – a Renaissance structure with a spire of entwined dragons, steep copper roofs, tiny windows and gables galore.
Christianborg, Copenhagen
Historic Trading Post in Copenhagen, written by Tor Kjolberg
