Self-Esteem Saturday

In law, I often feel inadequate. It feels a bit like no matter how hard I try, or how much time or love I devote to a subject, I never excel. Even when I do really well in particular assessment pieces, it never seems to materially change my overall grade so I have, at some point, stopped feeling any sense of accomplishment or pride in what I do across my life generally - all things are just things to be done, and there is nothing remarkable about simply doing the necessary things.

But today I felt an embarrassing rush of pride and achievement for the smallest, stupidest thing - I bought a train ticket.

I had to catch an early metro to get to the airport for my flight, but when I got to the station I found out that the ticket machine would only take coins, not the 50dkk note I was relying on to get me there. There wasn't a ticketing booth around, so I had to walk back to where I remembered seeing a 7/11 the day before and buy the cheapest thing there to get the coinage I needed. It was the smallest, most insignificant thing in the world, but I can't even remember the last time I have felt so pleased with myself.

About 2hrs later I was in Oslo. Norway's such a beautiful country - the airport is about 40mins out of the city, so I grabbed a bus in and the scenery was amazing - lots of really dense, emerald green pine trees interspersed with rolling hills of some kind of ridiculously green crop-grass and quaint farm houses ( you know the ones you see in movies? Burnt red with white beams? Exactly like those ones). I was sitting next to a lovely old lady from Vermont, who was about to go cruising with her son and daughter-in-law up the fjords. I assume that she was some kind of farmer, based on the half-hours worth of chat she supplied about farming techniques which she thinks the Norwegians were/should be using.

Once I managed to abandon my bags at my hostel, I hit the streets, fully intending to get to Akershus Fortress for the changing of the guards. Instead, the Gibson sense of direction kicked in, and I ended up at the Royal Palace. Incidentally, places seem much less royal when there is jack-hammering going on.

 

The Royal Palace, complete with its own construction zone. 

Me (has it been too long to still blame jetlag?) in front of the main street/park/pedestrian mall that joins the Palace to the Parliament.

Thinking I had gotten my bearings, I set off the direction that I thought the harbour, thus the fortress, was in. I ended up at Oslo University. So I turned around again, and somehow got to the Parliament (which is opposite the palace, at the end of a massive pedestrian mall/fountain-filled park).

The Norwegian Parliament building. 

By absolute fluke, I just started looking for tall buildings and walking towards them, and the 1st one I tried turned out to be City Hall, which was close enough to the fortress and shaped distinctively enough on the map that I was able to finally get my bearings and stroll up to Akershus.

Akershus Fortress and Castle is officially dated as having been built around 1300, but it is suspected that it is much older because of a letter the king (I can't remember which one) sent in 1300 which refers to the castle as holding an important document, which suggests that it probably wasn't a mud shack when the letter was written.
Fun fact: to prevent fraud in medieval times, important documents where written in the form of a "Scirogram" (?) , which essentially meant that letters were written out twice, next to each other on a page, and then the page was cut in half in a jig-saw like pattern. One copy was sent to the intended recipient, the other was kept in a safe place, and could be used too verify whether a particular document was the original or a fake.

It says that the fortress was decommissioned in the late 1800s, however the extent of the decommission seems pretty limited to me,  as the grounds still serve as the base for the Norwegian Army and the Prime Minister's offices. The grounds are patrolled 24/7/365 by the royal guards, and overall, it's still a pretty important defence (albeit administrative) location.

This is one of the Royal Guards. Since this is an active military base, I wasn't sure if I was allowed to take photos, thus why this is from so far away. But later I saw him swoop in a save a small child from faceplanting on the stones, so I think I probably could have gotten a bit closer. 

Fun fact: Heat stoke is a problem for the guards. Apparently they did some tests a few years ago and found that the temperature inside their hats can reach 70 degrees, and one soldier got 1st degree burns on his legs once from the heat (although I am deeply skeptical about the latter claim as their boots are leather and it is currently summer and it was 18degees). 

Inside the fortress wall. 

Most of the fortress was developed in response to the introduction of canons  which meant that putting a castle on a hill no longer cut it in terms of security. To store the black powder needed for the canons, several "powder rooms" had to be built. These rooms where usually towers with 3m thick walls and doors which were designed to open upwards, rather than outwards. Men working in the towers weren't allowed to smoke, wear military boots (because they had an iron heel which could spark) or swear (because back in the day they believed that it was possible to curse so badly that you could create sparks).

Powder Tower

 To allow snappy responses to would-be invaders, several Kasematis were built under the grounds. These were bunkers with canons and a small supply of black powder which could be used to start an attack. The most effective use of the Kasematis was on the slope known as "no mans land", where there at 3 canons on each side of the slope, perfectly placed so as to completely cover the field. If men tried to climb up the slope toward the castle, the canons, loaded with shards of metal, would be fired into into the approaching army. 
Fun fact: the soldiers working in the Kasematis lost their sense of hearing because of the noise of the canons in the enclosed space, but they also lost their sense of smell and taste due to the fumes from the black powder.

Kasimatis with 3 canons. These could be shot up to 5 times a minute and were loaded with bits of shrapnel. There's another Kasimatis opposite this, with canons aimed so as to fill the gaps between these 3. 

This Fortress was converted to a prison at some point. 

3m thick walls

The conditions were nothing short of terrible - up to 60men in a cell with only one bucket for the toilet, with the men wearing up to 35kgs of chains. The prisoners were also used for slave labour, which mostly meant teamshit jobs that no one else wanted to do. Now, this is word for word what the tour guide said at this point: "you know, things like emptying and cleaning toilets, taking out trash and stone sculpting". I assumed that when she said "stone sculpting" she really meant working in a quarry. Apparently, not so. Two prisoners were pardoned for their crimes because they did particularly nice sculptures of lions which now adorn the front of the Norwegian parliament building. One of them was a murderer. What kind of punishment is that? "Herman, you have to clean all the toilets, and watch out, everyone had gastro last night. Lars, here's some tweezers, now go and pick up all the rubbish from the streets. Hans, here's 10 tonnes of marble. Make something pretty, won't you?"

Me + the lion statue. 

I mean, it's a nice sculpture, but all this shows me is that the guy really knows his way around sharp tools, so when  he butchers you, he'll do a really nice job of it. 

The entire facility was surrendered to the Nazis during WW2, at which point the Norwegians got shut up in their own prisons, only without the potential for clemency through arts and crafts. It sounds like this is only the second time that foreigners have been able to successfully take Akershus (although not for the lack of Swedes trying). The first was a Swedish duke who attempted to lay siege to the castle and was comprehensively thrashed, so he decided to marry the daughter of the Norwegian king instead and got in that way. Classic if you can't beat 'em, marry their daughter tactics. 

Below is the "maiden tower" which was the original entrance to the castle, until the King put his foot down at having to ride through a dark tunnel (an added defence) in order to get into his castle. This is where the sneaky side of the Norwegians is apparent. They built the castle on a cliff face, so until canons became a thing, the only way in was on land. The land surrounding the castle was swampy, and they only made one, very thin, path through the marsh up to the gate. They also made the approach such that soldiers would be approaching with their right-hand forward, and since most soldiers were right-handed (they wore their shields on their left), this meant that they were approaching with their sword arm exposed which could be easily shot at from the castle walls. Tricky, right?

If you look closely, you'll see three thin slits below the two arched windows - that was where archers hid to knock off approaching enemies. 

I then went on an audio-tour of the inside of the Akershus Castle. The castle was a total work in progress until about the 16th century, with the various residents each adding their personal flair (normally in the form of adding new levels) to the building. 

You can see where each new level has been built up from the last

This was the school room for the royal kidlets. Notice that the wall is painted? At the time, the lower portions of walls were covered with canvas so the children could paint onto them. Here, for some reason, they didn't have canvas, so to mimic the trend, they painted the walls to look like they had cloth coverings. 

Me + a model of the Akershus Castle and Fortress

 The castle is still used for state occasions, so it's pretty impressive that they let tourists traipse through it on a daily basis.

The entrance hall for official events where all dignitaries enter.

The Official Dining Room 

I have no idea what this is meant to be - it was on the top level in the Men's Chambers.

Tomorrow night I start my Top Deck tour up to the top of Norway, then down through Finland to Estonia, so I'm not sure how reliable my Internet will be for the next few weeks, but I'll be back after that. 

L