Wednesday, October 6, 2010

12:45 PM

Sweden? / Norway?

Bus on a highway

The train took us from Stockholm to Karlstad. Then, for some reason, we had to jump on a coach bus which goes direct to Oslo. So right now I’m on said bus zipping through the countryside on my way to the place I’ve been most eager to visit.

There’s little to tell of yesterday. I went to the National Gallery art museum and had an excellent time. Those audio guides they offer, you should always get one. They provide some really interesting insights to many of the paintings, often discussing important symbols in the painting you would otherwise (unless very highly educated in fine art) not know about. Especially in Renaissance paintings there’s a lot going on that at first, or even a second, glance you wouldn’t notice. You can have a girl just, y’know, chillin’ in the frame, and you think, “Oh, cool, she looks relaxed,” but now, she’s doing a whole bunch of things at once. Like she’s got her foot on an open book, she’s holding a blank page, there’s a special brooch she’s wearing, there’s a dog at her feet, and she’s glancing off-frame—and each of these things means something. Really interesting.

I got to see the Rembrandt self-portrait, as well as Manet’s “Parisian Lady,” among a wide variety of other extraordinary work of art.

I finished at around four, even though the museum was open until eight, so I went and got some food and went to the National Library where I did some Norwegian studying. Nothing more to tell, really. Not the most exciting day, but very relaxing.

As I headed for the train this morning I noticed something further about the Swedes that makes them seem so much like Americans (or New Yorkers, at least). Beyond the buildings, beyond the layout of the cities and towns, beyond their style and attitude—they move like Americans.

I’ve noticed, as I think I mentioned earlier in London, that in Europe I have difficulty moving through crowds. With them, against them—it’s all but impossible. From London to Paris to Munich, I found it always challenging to even walk with the crowd, much less against it.

But, this morning, at Stockholm Central, at rush hour, I was faced with an onslaught of Swedish business-people, flooding off the commuter trains at me, with the entrance to my platform behind them. It was until this point that I had been taking my ease of movement in Sweden for granted. I started walking and, as I would in Grand Central, or any other major city hub, quickly made my way through the crowd. The Swedes, like Americans, move like water. I was a pebble and I glided right through—no one stopped, everyone bended this way or that, myself included, in that wonderful unspoken commitment to getting where you need to go that all decent commuters engage in.

An as I sat on the train, and once again watched the city melt into suburbs, melt into the countryside, and marveled at how incredibly similar it all was, I think I’ve come up with my personal theory on why this is (possibly reinforced if I notice something similar in Norway). Scandinavians and Americans are pioneer people, alone in our own lands separated from the rest of the world. The Scandinavians have not had strong governments for very long—in fact, for not much longer than Americans. They are trapped up here in the frozen North as America is trapped across the Atlantic. Their history is rough and uncertain, as American history often is. We are two very separate nations placed in very similar situations, and what has come of it? Two peoples, indeed different in their own way, but incredibly similar as well.

I think it may be the lot of a people separated out from the central community, and facing a challenging landscape—the Australians, the fifty-first state of America, I noticed, are much the same.

That is all for now. I shall take some time to absorb some more Norwegian vocabulary and hope for the best.