tilly_stratford (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
tilly_stratford) wrote2007-08-09 07:19 pm
tilly_stratford) wrote2007-08-09 07:19 pm
Entry tags:
A funny thing happened on the way to the graveyard
Os ska bu ti Sonsteinheilla
Bli du dærfor intje ræd
Stuge mi æ hole fjella
Mæ guld å sylv åro klæd
Today's quota: filled
That brings you back, doesn't it? It's actually much easier making questions this time around - the lovely people at NRK have already decided which categories I have to use. Although some of them quite puzzles me (Norwegian opera?), I save a lot of time when I don't have to wrack my brain for every little category.
I'm a little bit more clever this time around too - just move everything into the Deichman library, and the world's at my fingertips. Well, eventually people began to look at me strangely as my desk got completely hidden behind high stacks of books - Ibsen, Harry Potter, the French revolution, Grieg, The Hobbit, Roman emperors, anthology of children's books of 1989...
But, as I said, today's quota: Pwned.
After a few hours of mental exertion, I thought to myself that if I didn't find a spot of grass to lie in, I would surely die. But I glimpsed the tops of trees over a building, and decided to walk towards it. And I walked. And walked. And walked even further.
Oh, so it was a cemetary. A nice cemetery, though. Huge.
Turns out I had walked all the way to Vår Frelsers Gravlund - the main honorary cemetary in Norway. I could swear it was in another part of Oslo, but no - so I went exploring.
All the Norwegian big shots are buried there: Bjørnson, Fearnley, Munch, Øverland, Krohg, Prøysen and Ibsen (with a weird hammer symbol on an obelisk - I thought it was some communist sigil or other), my guess is, if you've heard of them and they're Norwegian, that's where they're buried.
The big one, though, and the only one I actively searched for, was of course the grave of Henrik Wergeland (some day I'll sit down and figure out my unfounded love for Wergeland. Is it the hedonism? The poetry? The sex scandals?The aftershave? I just don't know). It's in a shaded grove, some way from the other famous people, and not easy to miss when you know what you're looking for: A not entirely attractive green metal steeple with gilded herons on the side, with a bust under it.
Have I ever mentioned my love of tombstones? My main reason for loving cemetaries are the tombstones. Just imagine a life, fleeting thing it is, carved into stone, adorned with flowers and candles. Who says ancestral worship isn't practised in Europe?
The best tombstone in this particular cemetary, though, is that of Herman Wildenvey. Nothing fancy, just a bust, and poem underneath it: "Hark, you whose young heart creates wondrous melodies / to my words so that the poem speaks when I am quiet" (or something like that, I'm translating from memory).
So. Hungry. I might die. I'm boiling potatoes right now. Foooood.
Bli du dærfor intje ræd
Stuge mi æ hole fjella
Mæ guld å sylv åro klæd
Today's quota: filled
That brings you back, doesn't it? It's actually much easier making questions this time around - the lovely people at NRK have already decided which categories I have to use. Although some of them quite puzzles me (Norwegian opera?), I save a lot of time when I don't have to wrack my brain for every little category.
I'm a little bit more clever this time around too - just move everything into the Deichman library, and the world's at my fingertips. Well, eventually people began to look at me strangely as my desk got completely hidden behind high stacks of books - Ibsen, Harry Potter, the French revolution, Grieg, The Hobbit, Roman emperors, anthology of children's books of 1989...
But, as I said, today's quota: Pwned.
After a few hours of mental exertion, I thought to myself that if I didn't find a spot of grass to lie in, I would surely die. But I glimpsed the tops of trees over a building, and decided to walk towards it. And I walked. And walked. And walked even further.
Oh, so it was a cemetary. A nice cemetery, though. Huge.
Turns out I had walked all the way to Vår Frelsers Gravlund - the main honorary cemetary in Norway. I could swear it was in another part of Oslo, but no - so I went exploring.
All the Norwegian big shots are buried there: Bjørnson, Fearnley, Munch, Øverland, Krohg, Prøysen and Ibsen (with a weird hammer symbol on an obelisk - I thought it was some communist sigil or other), my guess is, if you've heard of them and they're Norwegian, that's where they're buried.
The big one, though, and the only one I actively searched for, was of course the grave of Henrik Wergeland (some day I'll sit down and figure out my unfounded love for Wergeland. Is it the hedonism? The poetry? The sex scandals?
Have I ever mentioned my love of tombstones? My main reason for loving cemetaries are the tombstones. Just imagine a life, fleeting thing it is, carved into stone, adorned with flowers and candles. Who says ancestral worship isn't practised in Europe?
The best tombstone in this particular cemetary, though, is that of Herman Wildenvey. Nothing fancy, just a bust, and poem underneath it: "Hark, you whose young heart creates wondrous melodies / to my words so that the poem speaks when I am quiet" (or something like that, I'm translating from memory).
So. Hungry. I might die. I'm boiling potatoes right now. Foooood.