Deep Breath - You’ve Done This Before

On anxiety, solo travel, Edvard Munch, and flying to Arctic Norway.

The trip had begun at 6am with a flight to Oslo. As I said goodbye to my other half, the old black dog of anxiety swept over me. It’s difficult to explain to people who don’t experience it. I’d been on hundreds of trips before and they were almost always wonderful, yet the build-up still catches me every time. The packing, the anticipation, the endless “what ifs.” It certainly hadn’t helped that my tooth filling had fallen out the day before, resulting in an entirely unwelcome dental emergency right before travelling.

Anxiety is strange for the people around you too. From the outside, it can seem irrational, but inside your body it feels entirely real, as though you might faint or die at any moment. When it hits, I tend to cope better alone, so I told him to go, which I felt so guilty for, but the important thing was that I didn’t run away from it. I didn’t give in to the beast.

By the time I reached the gate, I had found half an hour in a quiet, dimly lit lounge to calm my overactive chimp brain. I sat repeating small mantras to myself: You’re fine. You’ve done this before. It’ll be wonderful when you get there.

As the plane banked east, my anxiety subsided, and there was a brilliant view of Canary Wharf disappearing beneath us. We left the English coastline behind, clouds clinging to the coast, before crossing a remarkably clear North Sea where ships and oil rigs were sharply visible below. As we neared Norway, the cloud cover thickened, and the pilot announced the outside temperature: seven degrees Celsius.

Passport control in Oslo took a surprisingly long time. By the end of the questioning, I felt as though the border officer and I practically knew each other personally.

The shuttle from the airport to the hotel turned out to be incredibly straightforward, despite my earlier fretting about dragging cumbersome luggage around. After resting briefly at the hotel and freshening up, I took the express train into the city.

And then: Oslo.

I wandered down towards the waterfront and headed for the Munch Museum. Hunger got the better of me first, so I decided to eat in the restaurant at the top of the museum. The views across the city were spectacular, though admittedly even better from the adjacent bar where the windows weren’t partially screened with metal panels.

The food was gorgeous and predictably expensive. I was definitely underdressed for the restaurant's atmosphere, but I decided not to care. Sometimes you simply have to say, what the hell.

Service was a little slow, which left me with only about seventy minutes to explore the museum. I had assumed I would need far more time, but I knew I could always return on the journey home.

What I did manage to see astonished me. The exhibitions were beautifully curated and revealed such an enormous breadth of Munch’s work. Like many people, my knowledge of him had largely begun and ended with The Scream, but each room offered something unexpected.

And yes, The Scream was there.

I stepped into a darkened cube-like gallery and found a cluster of tourists holding phones aloft in front of the most famous version. The colours were extraordinary, intensified by the dramatic spotlighting against the darkness. I didn’t take a photograph straight away. I simply stopped and stared. There is something deeply strange and moving about seeing a work in real life that has become so embedded in collective consciousness.

Three versions were being rotated on display due to the fragility of the paper and pigments. One disappeared before I had the chance to photograph it, but honestly, I was happy about that. Some things feel better held as memories rather than evidence. I’ve never really been interested in taking selfies beside masterpieces just to prove I was there. I knew I was there. That felt enough.

Every Norwegian I encountered throughout the day was polite, kind and quietly helpful. I loved Oslo almost immediately and knew I would return.

That evening, I travelled back to the hotel via the express airport train and shuttle bus. Everything felt clean, calm and safe. I rolled into bed exhausted, but deeply grateful to have experienced a taste of Oslo.

The following day, I flew north to Bodø.