OH,OSLO!

Norway's capital of cool is having a moment, with stylish new hotels, cutting-edge cultural sites, and a wealth of inviting green spaces. Sloane Crosley finds surprise and delight around every corner.

- Sloane Crosley

ONE TRAVELS to a new city to correct assumptions, to pave over impressionistic fragments with the real deal. One does not sit down at a Paris café expecting to be seated next to Catherine Deneuve any more than one goes on an expedition to the North Pole in hopes of an internship with Santa.

But within hours of landing in Oslo, the Norwegian capital presented me with a prismatic fantasy version of itself. Did I come here to order warm cheese buns and a pilsner on the patio of the cultural center and café Litteraturhuset, a table over from the country's prime minister, Jonas Gahr Støre? I did not. Did I come here to angle for a glass of orange wine later that night at the bar Becco, only to find myself shoulder-to-shoulder with Renate Reinsve, the star of Joachim Trier's Oscar-nominated The Worst Person in the World? Nei. Nor did I ever think I'd see, also at Becco, a DJ/priest (take all the time you need to let that combination sink in) hovering over a pair of turntables. But over the course of a week in early September, Oslo insisted on presenting an idealized montage of blazing sunsets, arresting art, bracing fjord swims, and a populace that's exactly as cool as I'd imagined.

Is there a city right now that feels as culturally inclined, well-funded, and environmentally minded as Oslo (crowned "Green Capital" by the European Commission in 2019)? Since the discovery of oil in the North Sea in the late 1960s, Norway has gone from being one of the most underdeveloped countries in the region to one of the richest on the planet. It would take more than a week, not to mention a different skill set, to study the sociological effects of the economic boom. Suffice to say the tendency for self-deprecation among Norwegians is so apparent that it verges on dysmorphia.