Written by Gitte Paulsbo
The City Hall has been a symbol of Oslo since 1950. This is where the city is governed. It is here that both difficult and joyful messages are conveyed to the people, it is here that Christmas dinner is arranged for those who do not have a warm, decorated home to come to, it is here that marriage vows and tearful kisses are shared and it is here that speeches are given to young people entering the ranks of the adults. Grieg, Jagger and folk songs are played from the clock tower every hour, from seven in the morning until midnight. Here, people skate on the stairs, share deep conversations among the rose bushes and climb the statues in the hope of getting a better view of whoever is visiting the VG list that summer.
But how much do you really know about Oslo City Hall? Did you know, for example, that it is thanks to a lack of money that the City Hall you see today has its clock towers?
The large brick building is located in the middle of Rådhuskaia and welcomes you from far out into the fjord. The melody of Everybody Hurts ring out from the clock tower and mingle with the whistle of the passing tram. A muted echo of the city sounds blows across the water, accompanied by the crashing of waves and the cries of seagulls. You can't see it from the fjord, but on the inside of the building, a group of people are rubbing their faces. They're tired, overworked and sick of delivering bad news, but they do it anyway. Press conference after press conference, day in, day out, they stand on the podium and tell the inhabitants of the capital that they have to hold on a little longer. "We're not there yet, we have to get out the emergency rations with courage and bury ourselves in our own homes until the storm subsides.
The people rushing around on the stone floor inside the stoic building feel the responsibility no one wants right now. A responsibility they take anyway, out of love for the city and its inhabitants.
Alf Rolfsen's "Okkupasjonsfrisen" (Occupation frieze), a fresco that tells the story of one of the toughest challenges our country has ever faced, can be found in the Town Hall. The end of the work shows a celebrating people marching proudly and happily towards a future we cannot see, reminding us that we will once again emerge celebrating on the other side of the crisis. Looking up at the huge building and its historic monuments, it's hard not to feel a certain care and gratitude towards the city with the big heart.
Oslo is a unique city, and we find ourselves in a unique situation that puts everything into perspective. Stop and look around: up against the rooftops, around the corners and into the side streets lies a whole new city you may not have seen before. Why don't you start by getting to know the building that has hosted the city council's press conferences recently?
Although the City Hall was completed in 1950, the idea for it was first mooted 44 years earlier, in 1906. Architect Oscar Hoff launched the idea of a town hall at the bottom of Pipervika with a view of the fjord, and in 1915 the idea was picked up by Hieronimus Heyerdahl, Oslo's (or Kristiania's as it was called at the time) recently resigned mayor. He had missed a representative town hall for the city and initiated an architectural competition. 44 proposals, two rounds of competition and two years later, the architects Arnstein Arneberg and Magnus Poulsson emerged victorious with their proposal inspired by Stockholm City Hall. In 1918, however, there was no money to start building the project, and the architects were given a further 17 years to refine their drawings before the final proposal was submitted in 1930. A lot can happen in 17 years, and Arneberg and Poulsson changed their idea several times. Since the winning proposal in 1918, the future town hall had two clock towers and a more functionalist design than the original. Today, the clock towers, with their 49 bells, are the largest in the Nordic region.
If you look at the building from the fjord, you may be able to spot the human figures that adorn the walls of the City Hall. For example, high up on one of the brick walls you can see a statue of St. Hallvard, Oslo's patron saint, stretching his arms towards the sky. From the sea, it may look like a small man on the city hall wall, but the bronze sculpture designed by Nic Schiøll is actually nine meters high!
Along the Town Hall steps are six massive sculptures by Per Palle Storm, depicting a carpenter, a bricklayer, a quarryman, a stonemason, an electrician and a henchman: the workers who built the Town Hall. If you look back to the building itself, you'll see a relief on one of the corners depicting three people: two men and a woman. The woman depicts Albertine, Christian Krogh's novel character from 1886, who was driven into prostitution right here, in old Vika. And it's probably no coincidence that Krogh wrote the story here. The area on which the City Hall is built was the workplace of many prostitutes. So it's only fitting that they are also represented among the workers who surround the government building. Albertine, positioned between a bourgeois gentleman in a top hat and a worker in a sixpence, represents the transition between the old and the new Vika, and was designed by the artist Alfred Seland.
Did you know that on Liberation Day 1945, a daring aerial maneuver was carried out between the towers of the City Hall? The two pilots Odd Knut Roald and Carl Jakob Stousland flew in over the Oslo Fjord from the UK, and in the exhilaration of victory and the joy of having put the war behind them, they flew straight towards the then unfinished town hall and put their planes on edge through the towers, before continuing towards the base at Gardermoen.
In 1998, 23-year-old science student Bjarte Berntsen had the same idea at an after-party early one morning in August. His friend bets him 10,000 kroner that it won't work. But Bjarte is sure that someone has done it before. With a good dose of adrenaline in his blood, and without a pilot's license (though a good deal of experience), he steals a small plane from Hokksund airport and heads for Oslo. He's low over the fjord, aiming for the City Hall towers as the morning dawns behind him. Down on the ground, his friends are filming the daring 23-year-old maneuvering his way between the clock towers, before he sets course for Hønefoss, lands the plane and sprints into the forest.
Imagine that the next time you're sitting in the spring sunshine listening to the bell towers play!
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