Literary Europe VIII - Henrik Ibsen

(Note - A general post of my Norway visit is to come.  I still have a ton of photos to go through, and it was just easier to focus on this post first.)

While in Norway, I went to the Ibsen Museum in Oslo.  It is the last apartment he lived in until his death in 1906.  This apartment is possibly his grandest, as he was able to live as he wanted by the end of his life (due to his successful career as a playwright).  The museum is located very close to the National Theater and the Grand Hotel, where Ibsen would walk every afternoon to take his lunch at his private, reserved table at the Grand Cafe.  (Along this walk paparazzi would take photos, people would wait outside to see him, and some people even set their clocks by him since he left his house at the same time every day.) 

On the tour of his apartment, I got to see the room he wrote in, his two desks (one he first had at this apartment, and the other, his "Munich desk" which he eventually had shipped over from Germany).  In his writing room also hung a portrait of his "nemesis", another playwright (I believe it was of Swedish playwright, August Strindberg) which he kept 'watching over him' to 'make' him write.  It was a portrait that Strindberg wanted for himself, and he would have been (possibly was) infuriated to know that Ibsen had it, and was using it for motivation to write.  While there I also got to see the bed Ibsen died in, where he uttered his lasts words, which were "On the contrary" - which many people feel reflect his written works and his personality.

Although I was not allowed to take photos inside the apartment, I do have a few of the outside of the building it is in, the exhibition at the museum, and other nearby buildings of importance to Ibsen.

Ibsen Museum.  The main floor of his apartment should be the third floor in this photo.

Closer view of the main entrance and gift shop.

Statue of Ibsen outside the museum.

Plaque on the outside of the building.

(Pop art) image of Ibsen, alongside a bust of the founder of the museum.

Ibsen's coat, hat, and walking stick!

A fan with Ibsen's signature (a women was collecting signatures of famous people....or something like that, can't quite remember the story).

In the bathroom - they had Ibsen tiles!

National Theater which Ibsen would pass on his daily walk.

It even has his and two other playwright's names on it :)

Standing by the Ibsen statue outside of the National Theater.

The Grand Hotel.

The Grand Cafe where Ibsen would take his lunch every afternoon.  His table is still there, though I didn't go inside to see it.