University of Oslo, of her native city, where her mother moved from South Africa before she was born. “I like that it is so safe and I don’t have to look over my shoulder the whole time. I like that it is innocent, still, in a world that is so globalized. Norwegians are very democratic and fair.” A vivid example: the Royal Palace, a short walk from the harbor, has no barricade around it. The handsome, creamcolored Neoclassical building is the primary residence of the king and queen, but it stands relatively unprotected on a small rise in Slottsparken, a forested area open to the public just west of Karl Johans Gate, Oslo’s main street. “We’re egalitarian,” says Bjørn Moholdt, editor-in-chief of the Oslobased travel magazine Reiser & Ferie. “No single Norwegian is considered better than another.” This openness can veer into naïveté. When the most famous painting in Norwegian history, Edvard Munch’s The Scream, was stolen from the National Gallery in Oslo in 1994, the surprise for many was how minimally it had been guarded. Ten years later, another version of the same painting was nabbed from Oslo’s Munch Museum. But both pieces were subsequently recovered, and as I stare through the thin, simple pane of protective glass over the version hanging once more in the National Gallery, I steal glances at the low-tech camera panning the room and the guard who lazily checks in every once in a while. Despite everything, they refuse to relegate The Scream to the fate of the Mona Lisa, encased in an art-world version of the Pope mobile, preferring to trust in the better instincts of mankind. Will this attitude inevitably change? When I ask locals about the effect that oil money has had on their society, most of them look momentarily embarrassed by the question, then remind me that the oil will not last forever and that much of the money has been socked away, as if this prudence means they remain unchanged by it. High taxes and a high cost of living—Oslo is among the most expensive cities in the world—also temper any possible extravagance. Baqwa’s answer is more nuanced, perhaps because of her unusual perspective as both insider and outsider. “Their lifestyles have changed,” she says of her fellow Norwegians, noting how the petroleum industry has buoyed the entire nation’s economy. “Because they have so much more money, they travel more. But travel just makes them even happier that things are as simple as they are back home. Norwegians are trying to deal with the fact that they are so rich and that this country is becoming, on some level, connected to the world.”
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O ONE KNOWS WHY THE ANGRY BOY IS SO ANGRY. The sculpture of a petulant child is the most beloved of the hundreds of works designed by Gustav Vigeland for Oslo’s Frogner Park. Their installation was completed in 1950, and they have a special place in the hearts of Oslo’s residents. The oversize nudes Vigeland carved in granite feel exceptionally soft to the touch—almost soapy—and have a puffy muscularity reminiscent of the work of Fernando Botero. Of the long row of bronze sculptures, it is The Angry Boy whose pedestal has been rubbed to a polish by visitors. I look at the boy’s tiny clenched fist and hunched shoulders and see not so much anger as stubborn defiance: a refusal to change or grow up. It is, for me, a monument to a wish for things to remain as they are. But, of course, that isn’t happening. To take the T-bane subway four stops from Majorstuen, near Frogner Park in the prosperous and mostly blond west, to Grønland, in the east, is to get on in Scandinavia and get off in London, or maybe in Mogadishu or Lahore. Norway has long offered a generous reception for asylum seekers. The inland neighborhood of Grønland, a haven for those who believe in a multicultural Oslo, is characterized by immigrant shops such as Sheikh Enterprises and Khalid Jewellers, and call centers posting rates to Afghanistan and Morocco. Meanwhile, nearby Grünerløkka is full of trendy boutiques, including designershoe mecca Shoe Lounge, and stylish restaurants like Sult, evidence of the process in which commerce capitalizes on a neighborhood’s edginess. One night I go to a jazz club called Blå in a nearby arts district of graffiti-covered warehouses on the banks of the Akerselva River. I’m here to see the Frank Znort Quartet, described to me as “the house band of Grønland.” Once inside, I understand what this means: the quartet seems to have a dozen members from all over the world, each taking a turn to sing an upbeat jazz tune or introduce a favorite »
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