Munch and Lunch and Other Things

by Dan · July 16, 2025

We decided to start our day by visiting the Munch Museum on Tuesday, July 15. What a bad decision! So we knew The Scream was not a happy work of art, but we hadn’t realized how depressing his work as a whole was. There are 5 floors dedicated to Munch. We made it through one.

Of course, everyone has to get a photo next to Munch’s masterpiece. Since flash photos aren’t allowed in the darkened room, most photos probably look like this:

The museum has 3 copies of The Scream, but only one is displayed at a time, to preserve the works. Here are what they look like (these are just copies):

Here’s a self portrait of the man

And of Friedrich Nietzsche, though he never met the man

The Galloping Horse

His version of Starry Night

Above you see the most hopeful of Munch’s painting. Most were darker, closer to The Scream. One floor of Munch was enough. We went to a different floor to see Kerstin Brätsch METAATEM, which means something like “self reflecting spirit”. It was a lot brighter and more colorful.

Lots of it looked like parts of a gigantic jigsaw puzzle.

We left art behind and headed towards the roof. We saw the Opera House (the iceberg) and the mini iceberg.

We saw the tower marking our Airbnb.

It seemed like a sailing ship might ram the mini iceberg

Here’s a floating sauna dwarfed by a massive cruise ship

Motor boats lined the canals

Behind the museum was a sculture of the Mother in the Meadow

Next to the mother were some geese. A kind woman took our photo by them.

On our way to lunch at a multicultural food cart called Vippa, we saw a giraffe

We finally made it to Vippa, and had a nice lunch.

On our way back, we went to Akershus Festning (fortress). Built around 1300, it has successfully defended Oslo since that time, never being defeated in battle, although it surrendered to the Nazis in 1940. This is a monument to the victims of World War II, just outside the fortress. Why the woman is twice as big as the man or why they are both naked, I wasn’t able to determine, although Norwegians seem to have a thing for anatomically correct naked statues.