​Oslo and the Screaming Edvard Munch

This is an artistic view of Oslo. For a spiritual view, look at ''I met a monk in Oslo''.

For a Copenhagen article, look at ''Fun tour of Copenhagen''. For Copenhagen and Hamsun, look at ''Knut Hamsun's Copenhagen''.

Edvard Munch is **Norway's **national pride when it comes to painters. Edvard was an early expressionist. Which means he presents his paintings with a lot of subjective interpretations. Psychological elements take a strong part of his paintings. *Expressionism *opposes Impressionism. Impressionism takes the painting more for what it is. For example, The Opera in Oslo is an opera. It's not a cage full of freedom seekers that compiles enlightened people who are searching for the collective unconscious.

The thing that I think is awesome is that **Munch **has a lot of *impressionistic *paintings that became a big deal and he is still regarded as an expressionist. Just like the Hannah Montana song, he gave us ''the best of both worlds''. This was because expressionism was a new way. As we know, you're more fluid in changing style when the artform is new.

Munch versus the Impressionist

​The impressionist: Akershus Fortress. It's the fortress from 1299 where the king and his friends hanged out a lot. They also hanged other people there. There's a nice tree. Look at that beautiful stone.

The expressionist: This **fortress **is run by aliens. The people there were consciously deluding themselves and turned their spirit into a devil by taking part of this ridiculous parade of organized chaos. It was like this when it was built and the people using this as a national symbol is still part of the terror that is covering the atmosphere.

It's in place vs out of place.

Fun facts about Edvard Munch and Oslo

It's the city where **Munch **started out as an artist

There is a museum dedicated to him here since 1963

The famous painting ''Scream'' has a second version in his museum

The **Grand Cafe **in Karl Johans street is to Munch like Sarte and Hemmingway to Les Deux Magots in Paris

**Munch **himself called **Oslo **(which then was called Kristiania) ''The enemy city''

He chose to isolate himself from people and still remained productive during his Oslo years

A sad life

​**Munch **himself had a lot of sadness. A bunch of death surrounded him and you see similar things in his paintings. Just check out Munchmuseet. He don't present **Oslo **as the most amazing town. **Munch **was first a *realist *painter actually. Which is more like the impressionist. Perhaps the sadness that life brings him makes it necessary to escape reality. It's like when you're a **child **and create imaginary people in your life because the rest of the world is not so good to you.

​Talking about escaping

​There's something called** ''Escape games''**. You buy tickets and enter a room with other friends or random people and try to solve the puzzles in order to get out of there. It's fantastic how real it becomes when you put your physical body into it. I recommend **Oslo **because it has the best escape games in Europe.

Theft at the museum

​His most famous paintings ''Scream'' and ''Madonna'' were stolen from the Munch museum. Two guys ran in and just took the paintings and ran out and jumped into an *Audi *and that's it. A couple of years later the police fixed some things and confirmed that the paintings were back in the museum. Check out this place before the paintings disappear again.

Fun facts about Oslo

The King and Queen and their family live here in their palace

In **1352 **there was a huge fire in **Oslo **and the city was pretty much rebuilt. Buildings from that time still stands tall! After that the city was called Christiania

The nobel peace price is given out here in **Oslo **every year the 10th of December which is the day Alfred Nobel died