18th century day at the Norwegian Folk Museum

Last Sunday, the 22^nd, the Norwegian Folk Museum in Oslo went back to the year 1700 (or rather, 1700-ish). The open air museum was filled with music, dance performances and handicrafts from the era and, of course, people in costume from the early to late 1700s as well as national costumes.
So I packed my bags with my best finery and went to my old haunting ground Oslo to meet up with my Norwegian friends and fellow Swedes Madame Nordlund and Madame Westholm.

Outfit of the day: Anglaise and cap by Mme

Nordlund, fan and belt buckle by yours truly, shoes

 from American Duchess and bag by Court Tailor 

Armand.

Monsieur Kjaerstad, Court Tailor Armand, me, monsieur Fjeldet

and Monsieur Bjerke. Photo: Mathia Leuch

And the Swedish ladies managed to land the front page in the local newspaper Vårt Oslo...

Mme Nordlund, Mme Westholm and I at the market stalls, getting 

tempted by a  brand new book on stays. Photo: Patricia Varela, 

Vårt Oslo

Apparently, King Frederik V himself held a solemn audience outside the museum entrance...

...nevertheless, it was impossible to hear what these guys were saying (despite the oh so modern microphones), so we never even got who was supposed to be the King.

Mathia with her new fan (guess who made it)

Tasty cream waffles

On our way to Gol stave church

A grey and humid morning had turned into a sunny day with scorching heat... and according to Murphy's Law, I had left both my wide-brimmed hat AND my parasol at home! But somehow we survived without ruining our pale skin in the sun.

All in all, it was a very exciting day, full of events and surprises. And beautiful art, costumes and bunader (the Norwegian national costume. I could have owned one of those too if only I had let my late Norwegian grandmother make one for me while she was still going strong with her embroideries and knittings. Oh well...). Oslo was as beautiful as ever in the spring. Unfortunately, I didn't manage to take pictures of everything, cameras were prohibited in some places (and what's more, for some reason, Blogspot will not allow me to upload any more images in this post).

Mourning attire & winning a costume contest

For obvious reasons, mourning fans are probably not on top of anyone's wish list, but I have still missed a matching fan to go with my black polonaise... Halloween was the perfect excuse to finally make that fan - and wear the dress again, anyway.  (Has it been five weeks already? I guess I need to update more often... Oh well.) The fan was inspired by an original found somewhere on the net (probably Ebay). Interestingly, it sports one of the most simplistic and naïve paintings that I've ever seen on an 18th century fan. Because of this, it was also unusually quick and easy to copy.

 The polonaise mentioned was originally made to be worn on stage when I was a backing operatic-style vocalist in a band quite long ago, which is why it might not be completely historically accurate...  In any case, on 18th century events I have mostly been wearing it on the yearly memorial service for king Gustaf III in Riddarholmen church in Stockholm, and on some masquerade balls...

I may look bored, but I'm supposed to be a vampire, you know...

Of course it's a rather heavy thing to wear on a night out, but it's still perfect for Halloween. Especially if you're going to a party with a costume contest, which I did on this particular night. And guess what - I actually won the whole thing! :-)
Not only that, my zombie friend Lena placed herself as number three in the contest as well. Sadly, however, I didn't manage to get better photos from the occasion than these...

My zombie friend and I