Have there been corresponding thefts of Klimt paintings?

Those Viennese have MUCH better security. t /no sense of humor.

I was telling a Norwegian friend about the new thefts and she became very concerned, saying, "another one?! people must be making fun of us!"

Just got an email from her:

The problem is that we're not used to people who take stuff that isn't theirs… I guess that's why we don't protect it with alarms etc. It's kind of sad actually.

I was telling a Norwegian friend about the new thefts and she became very concerned, saying, "another one?! people must be making fun of us!"

This is the same country that recently allowed a man to smuggle an ax onto a plane in his carry-on, which he then used to attack the pilot, no?

Laughing, check.

Norway: Nicer Than You.

Not worth saying twice. Or even once.

What? No Stray Cat Strut ?

Some of us actually don't want hamsters do die of heart attacks....

The problem is that we're not used to people who take stuff that isn't theirs… I guess that's why we don't protect it with alarms etc. It's kind of sad actually.

I think that I've mentioned here before the Norwegian art museums I've visited that are not only unattended, but which ask visitors to make change for their own admission fee from a cash box filled with the money from previous visitors.

It was a nice country while it lasted.

It was a nice country while it lasted.

Yeah, until it was overrun by zombie Ibsen clones....

I think it makes Norway seem ADORABLE.

I seem to remember being able to see The Scream from the front door of the museum.

Norway: Nicer Than You.

Forget Norway...

Only in Kenya...

Munch is a very interesting character psychologically. He had all of that anguished artwork when he was young. Then, in middle-age, he went through an intense and apparently successful psychotherapy. Much of his later work is gloriously optimistic and joyful, including a wonderful mural-sized expressionist sunrise in the university hall where they announce the Nobel Peace Prize every year.

During my slacker years I spent some time in the little village on the Oslo fjord where Munch kept his summer cottage before he died in the 1940s. In the afternoons, the caretaker of Munch's cottage would give me strong coffee and tell me stories about the artist. The elderly and only recently optimistic Munch was one of Norway's last victims of WWII. Toward the end of the German occupation, a Norwegian resistance team blew up a German freighter that was anchored out in the fjord. Munch's housekeeper thought that it was the start of the allied invasion, so she put Munch into the root cellar where he would be safe. Once in the cellar he caught pneumonia and he died a few days later.