Stopped by Vigeland Park today, and realized I hadn't put up a photo of this famous Oslo attraction. Gustav Vigeland was a brilliant sculptor with whom the city cut an extraordinary deal. They built him a studio, and he donated his life's work to the city when he died. The result was incredible sculpture park in the middle of Frogner Park, which is the one place in Oslo that looks somewhat Parisian. There are wide grassy lawns and trees planted in rows, and countless sculptures of naked people.

Vigeland's work is really quite unique, he sculpted iexpressionless, uniform male, female and child figures in all kinds of poses that represented the range of human interactions. There is anger, love, triumph, and defeat all portrayed by these stock human figures. It's odd, but captivating.

At the end of the sculpture park, on a hill, there's set a large monolith which is a giant sculpture of intertwined naked bodies. To me, it's frightening; I think of genocide; heaps of bodies piled up on top of one another. But everyone sees something different. Either way, it's a gorgeous park, and the sculpture portion is a must see in Oslo.

There was a second drama to today, as the fire dept. came storming into the park, and a diver jumped out with a fireman and started running towards the large pond in the center of the park. I'm not sure entirely what happened, but it seemed like someone had fallen into the freezing waters. It seemed like everything ended up ok, my second guess was that a child wandered out onto the ice, but I don't know the full story, so I'll have to browse through the papers tomorrow. Hopefully everything ended up alright.