Saturday, May 27, 2017

18th century day at the Norwegian Folk Museum

Last Sunday, the 22nd, the Norwegian Folk Museum in Oslo went back to the year 1700 (or rather, 1700-ish). The open air museum was filled with music, dance performances and handicrafts from the era and, of course, people in costume from the early to late 1700s as well as national costumes.
So I packed my bags with my best finery and went to my old haunting ground Oslo to meet up with my Norwegian friends and fellow Swedes Madame Nordlund and Madame Westholm.

Outfit of the day: Anglaise and cap by Mme
Nordlund, fan and belt buckle by yours truly, shoes

 from American Duchess and bag by Court Tailor 
Armand.
Monsieur Kjaerstad, Court Tailor Armand, me, monsieur Fjeldet
and Monsieur Bjerke. Photo: Mathia Leuch

And the Swedish ladies managed to land the front page in the local newspaper Vårt Oslo...


Mme Nordlund, Mme Westholm and I at the market stalls, getting 
tempted by a  brand new book on stays. Photo: Patricia Varela, 
Vårt Oslo
Apparently, King Frederik V himself held a solemn audience outside the museum entrance...



...nevertheless, it was impossible to hear what these guys were saying (despite the oh so modern microphones), so we never even got who was supposed to be the King.

Mathia with her new fan (guess who made it)

Tasty cream waffles




On our way to Gol stave church

A grey and humid morning had turned into a sunny day with scorching heat... and according to Murphy's Law, I had left both my wide-brimmed hat AND my parasol at home! But somehow we survived without ruining our pale skin in the sun.

All in all, it was a very exciting day, full of events and surprises. And beautiful art, costumes and bunader (the Norwegian national costume. I could have owned one of those too if only I had let my late Norwegian grandmother make one for me while she was still going strong with her embroideries and knittings. Oh well...). Oslo was as beautiful as ever in the spring. Unfortunately, I didn't manage to take pictures of everything, cameras were prohibited in some places (and what's more, for some reason, Blogspot will not allow me to upload any more images in this post).