11191 views

This image of the mausoleum is the main one from the Emanuel Vigeland Museum. This has already been written about in this blog, back in 2006, but it happens that last year I wrote a piece about it for a magazine that declined to publish it. Also around the same time I reviewed a Charlemagne Palestine concert that took place in the mausoleum, which another magazine declined to publish. It seems that <em>North</em> is as good a place as any to merge and publish the two unpublished articles from June and August 2012. For travellers: the Emanuel Vigeland Mausoleum In the midst of the large wooden houses that make up a typical suburb on the west side of Oslo, possibly the most secret of all Norwegian tourist attractions can be found. In this suburb of Slemdal stands a strange brick building - a mausoleum, the final resting place for the...

9278 views

22 January. Free dog food to the 13th customer after 8.13pm, i.e. 2013 hours, a tribute to the year 2013 using the 24 hr clock. The 13th customer poses with her dog food. The crate at her right hand has a role to play tonight. Essays written using random essay generators... ...are placed around the room. A mysterious crate that's been in the cellar for 50 years. At 2200 hours on 22 January, the box will be opened. A closeup of the crate and its mysterious hieroglyphics. 2200 hours. The Devil has been nominated to undertake the opening ceremony. In his right hand, The Devil holds a hammer, with which to pry the crate open, Devil-style. Empty... ...apart from this tiny piece of paper, 32 x 43mm.

9190 views

Hanging from my Ikea CD towers is the latest Christmas CD from the Micronomicon label, Christmas Postmas, which features a certain Xmas recording I had a hand in: Dr Sno and the Santamangas - 'Tomorrow Never Knew What Yesterday Will Be' (aka 'From Christmas With Love'). We present the mp3 here on Blather.net as an Xmas gift to YOU, in case you intend to waste the holiday season on the sofa watching James Bond flicks. Mp3.

10681 views

Here's the story. Back in May 2008, I publicized a DJ set that a friend an I were doing with the text below. The event took place on 16 May, the night before Norway's national holiday, and the text was presented as 16 reasons why you should spend the night at our event: 1. You are looking for that vague "something more". 2. You think life "should mean something". 3. You find yourself "stranded" and "adrift" yet you feel there is a way out of this scenario. 4. You find yourself "in Norway" but you don't know why. 5. You have money and you don't know how to spend it. 6. You have a thirst and you don't know how to quench it. 7. You have ears but you don't know what you should be listening to. 8. You need to react. 9. You need to experience at least a...

9603 views

In my blog entry of 6 March 2006, I described my attempt to go to the spot on the hill of Ekeberg overlooking Oslo which provides the setting for Scandinavia's most famous painting, The Scream by Edvard Munch. There was too much snow for me to make it up the trail that time. Four years later, a friend who frequented the spot walked me up there. If it wasn't for her it would undoubtedly have slipped my mind forever, but here at last are some modern photos of the Scream scene. Here I am on the spot, standing around looking as normal and un-Scream like as possible. This is supposed to be the exact location but with plenty of un-1893 trees and you'll notice the fence is nothing like the straight diagonal line in the painting. I suppose an earlier fence existed in 1893. I am familiar with two versions...

4093 views

Hi - I have a personal message for North readers at the end of this blog entry. But first read about my latest exploits: This year at the non-corporate Oslo music festival By;Alarm (which occurs at exactly the same time as the more commercial music festival By:Larm), Dacianos played at Mir, but the band was reduced to... well, just me. 'The rest of the band are in jail,' I announced at the start of the show. I had seen some guy on stage say this years ago, can't remember who, but it's a good way to start. I played 'Polyxo's Ghosts' at the piano keyboard, then I introduced the small keyboard from 1989 on which I played 'Ridiculous!' I introduced the song by dedicating it to anyone whose psychiatrist has psychiatric problems. That didn't seem to get a reaction so I said 'Judging by your reaction, it's the wrong audience'....

3550 views

About a year and a half ago, artists Trond Arne Vangen and Frode Fivel completely changed our bar with cardboard and convincingly made it look like an old-fashioned bar with old-style wood furnishings. Now the duo are back with more cardboard, with a concept based on a banana box. I've got some photos here, which should show you (especially readers who have been here) how dramatic a change this is to the normal use of the space. Here's what a standard banana box looks like: Trond Arne and Frode then built a giant one of these, and plonked it right in the middle of the bar, where it has become a kind of stage. The DJs who are performing here are actually wearing cardboard dresses. Trond Arne posed from the camera, 'backstage', behind the cardboard, and behind the cardboard costumes. But he is not averse to trying on a cardboard...

3540 views

Mary Wollstonecraft, remembered for A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), and for having died from giving birth to Mary Shelley, also travelled through Scandinavia in the summer of 1795, and wrote of her experiences in Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark, which I've been reading. Here's some excerpts for you... The northern origin of humanity (from Letter V) 'So far from thinking that the primitive inhabitants of the world lived in a southern climate, where Paradise spontaneously arose, I am led to infer, from various circumstances, that the first dwelling of man happened to be a spot like this which led him to adore a sun so seldom seen; for his worship, which probably preceded that of demons or demi-gods, certainly never began in a southern climate, where the continual presence of the sun prevented its being considered as a good; or rather...

3669 views

The Norwegian Thor Bjørklund (1889-1975), like Jesus, was a once humble carpenter, until he was gripped by a visionary thought... Thor, a native of Lillehammer, liked his cheese slices thin. But god damn it, he couldn't get those cheese slices thin enough! He then had the crazy idea of using his carpentry tools in the kitchen. His experiments with a carpenter's plane on a lump of cheese were such a success, he designed the cheese slicer we know and love today, basing it on the plane. On 27 February 1925 he was awarded a patent, and 27 February ever since has been celebrated as osteskorperdagen, 'cheese-parings day', the biggest holiday in the Norwegian calendar, when everyone gorges themselves on thin slices of cheese in the cold, icy streets. Having now reached the depths of utter trivia, here ends our series on Norwegian inventions.

3659 views

'Don't make fun of the Arm!' Tori warned, as I departed from the museum. But I have no intention of doing so. I'm a great admirer of the Arm, in all its blue, grey and silver majesty. The Arm (pictured) is the, eh, colleague of Tori, a friend of mine who is an archaeologist - an underwater archaeologist, no less - working at Norsk Sjøfartsmuseum, the Norwegian Maritime Museum, which sits at the water on the edge of the Oslo Fjord. Many's the time she has been off duty, drinking at my bar, telling me about the Arm, who she felt was probably lonely there in the museum on his own. What fascinated me about the Arm, and the reason I went to see him, was that Tori told me he had many more joints than the human arm, thus can claim to be... superior. You can see his shoulder...