It was in those days when I wandered about hungry in Kristiania, that strange city which no one leaves before it has set its mark upon him…. —Knut Hamsun Out of the three Scandinavian capitals, Oslo might be the least conspicuous one. Being subject to alternatively Danish and Swedish rules throughout history, it is not as urban or continental as Copenhagen, nor can it compare with Stockholm as a grand metropolis....
The whole idea of pleasure in Western art, wrote Michael Hofmann, a German-born poet and translator, seems to have been mortgaged by the French, while the Germans “should have stuck to philosophy”. The Germans collectively may tend to hide their pensive and introspective sensitivity behind a sombre and solemn façade of reticent self-restraint, but they never shy away from importing the cheerful cosiness from the Danes, the Japanese and the French....