This past Tuesday was another warm summer
day in Oslo; blue skies with some clouds, even rather hazy toward the early
evening. Perfect boating weather. My husband and I ended up out on the Oslo
fjord for a few hours, first sailing past Tjuvholmen and Aker Brygge, then
Rådhusplassen, and then around the island of Hovedøya where we sometimes end up
if we’re in the mood for a really good seafood dinner. But this time we had taken
dinner with us to eat on the boat—shrimp, a loaf of bread, and mayonnaise. We ended up docking at the guest marina on the
small island of Gressholmen. It didn’t take the ducks and geese very long to
discover that we had bread on the boat; they swam up to the boat to get some
handouts shortly after we docked.
Gressholmen is a nature reserve with many
types of wild flowers and plants; up until 2007 it was also home to thousands
of rabbits, but they were unfortunately done away with so as to preserve the
natural vegetation. The reason given for killing the rabbits was that they decimated
the vegetation. I’m not sure this was the only reason, but who can argue with
the nameless authorities and bureaucrats who make these decisions?
The rabbits weren’t hurting anyone; in fact, they were one of the main
attractions of the island. Cute, and tame enough so that they would hop right
up to you as you walked along the island’s many narrow dirt paths. That
happened to us any number of times. These days the island feels rather empty
without them.
I took a lot of photos that evening, as the
lighting and the weather were perfect. Some are of the island’s flower and
plant life, some of the bird life, and one photo is of the summer restaurant,
Gressholmen Kro (
http://www.gressholmen.no/index.html), that we frequented much more often during the 1990s. It’s
possible to get dinner here; we drank our after-dinner coffee here that evening, walking up from the boat to the kro and along the way stopping to look at the many wildflowers. And then back to the boat to greet more of the ever-present bird life.
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| Geese near the boat |
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| Dirt path on the way to the restaurant, where we would often meet the rabbits when they were still alive |
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| Wild rose bush |
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| Wild rose |
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| View of Oslo from Gressholmen |
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| Wild roses |
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| A twig that looked like a snake |
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| Gressholmen Kro |
