Oslo
— — a city the forest forgets to leave.
Not only on a wall.
“The city at the top of a long blue fjord, ringed by forest that comes right down to the tram stops. The Opera House slopes into the harbour like an iceberg you can walk on. Cross-country tracks run from the metro line in winter. The Vigeland park keeps its 212 bronze and granite figures out under the sky. The light comes back slowly after February.
Oslo, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Oslo sits at the head of the Oslofjord, on the south coast of Norway, with a population of about 700,000 in the city and 1.5 million in the metropolitan area. The city is unusually green: the Oslomarka forest covers two-thirds of the municipal area and reaches the edge of the metro lines. Founded in the eleventh century and rebuilt by Christian IV in 1624 after fires, it became Norway's capital again in 1814. The fjord opens south toward the Skagerrak.
Oslo sits at 60° north, which sets the light into long, narrow extremes. In late December the sun rises around 9:18 and sets near 15:12, giving roughly six hours of daylight, much of it low and amber. In June the sun lingers past 22:40 and the sky never fully darkens. Painters and architects have built around the angle: Snøhetta's Opera House, finished in 2008, presents a slanted marble surface that catches the long light and reads white from across the harbour.
The city is reached by Gardermoen Airport, 47 kilometres north, with a 20-minute express train to the central station. The Vigeland Park, in Frogner, holds 212 bronze, granite, and wrought-iron sculptures by Gustav Vigeland, installed between 1939 and 1949, and is open at all hours without admission. The Munch Museum, rehoused in a thirteen-storey building called Lambda in 2021, holds the largest Munch collection in the world. Holmenkollen ski jump, on a forested ridge, has a public observation deck.