Lilacs and the Gamle Aker Church

Lilacs are my favorite flowers, followed closely by lilies of the valley. Lilacs grow in abundance in Oslo right now; their purple flowers and wonderful fragrance are too colorful and too strong to be ignored. They are late bloomers this year because spring was late in arriving this year. If you walk up along the Akerselva river you will come upon many lilac bushes with flowers that are all different shades of purple. I would like to have cut some of the flowers to have taken home with me, but people don’t do that here even though the flowers grow wild. I respect that but I would have liked to take a sprig or two just the same. There are also many lilac bushes that grow in the vicinity of the oldest church in Oslo, the Old Aker Church (Gamle Aker kirke--http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Aker_Church). The church dates from around the year 1100 A.D. and is one of the most beautiful churches in the city. It is also the oldest building in Oslo. It is surrounded by a church graveyard with many trees and a lovely view out over the city. The church grounds are very peaceful to walk around in on a warm spring or summer day.

The church itself is very peaceful to walk around in, and we have been there a few times to hear different choirs sing carols before Christmas. I have also been there to attend Good Friday services which are very solemn and moving. I have been there several times even though the services are Protestant and I am Catholic. The church was originally a Catholic (Christian) church, and still has the feel of a Catholic church. It feels ancient, but that feeling is a good feeling and one that inspires awe, much in the same way as Westminster Abbey does, and the baptistery of the cathedral in Frejus in France which dates from the fifth century A.D. Just to stand in those buildings and to try to imagine what it was like to be in those places at those earlier times is daunting. I remember standing in Westminster Abbey upon the graves of people (mostly monks) who had died of bubonic plague in the 1340s, and it was an indescribable feeling to stand there and know that they were there before you. It is that feeling of the linearity of time that comes over you, when you know that sometime in the future there will be people who will look back on us and our lives and wonder how we were and what we did.

Below the Gamle Aker church is a parselhage, which means garden colony. Oslo’s inhabitants can apply for a parcel of land that they can use as their own garden. The waiting lists for these parcels of land are long. We are on one such list, and there are one hundred individuals ahead of us. The likelihood of obtaining one of them in our lifetime is thus slim to none. So that may be one reason to buy a house with a small yard, so that we can grow flowers and tomatoes and some few vegetables. Time will tell. Houses are expensive in Oslo and also in the nearby suburbs. It is not unusual for prices for average-sized homes to approach a million US dollars (or more). The parselhage in the area of the Gamle Aker church is on a street called Telthusbakken, which is famous for its very old traditional wooden homes. They are lovely old homes that have undergone many renovations, surrounded by beautiful gardens. Their owners take good care of them, but unfortunately when they burn, they burn to the ground, as happened a few years ago with one of the houses. The married couple who owned the house perished in the fire. Also in the vicinity of the parselhage is a restaurant called Akersberget (http://www.akersberget.com/Bilder.html), which was renovated and restored a few years ago after standing as a decrepit old building for nearly as long as I have lived in Oslo.