A fun weekend at Oslo book festival!

Last weekend there was a book festival in our capital, Oslo. There were several tents filled with books and authors just waiting to be discovered! I obviously wanted to go, but as it is an hour drive from us to Oslo I knew I was in for spending the whole day there. Which, by the way, I was already inclined to do...! My boyfriend, however, was much less inclined to do just that - so the quest was on to find something for him to occupy his hours with. Fortunately, there was a food festival just around the block from the book tents, so that was easy going. He was quite happy to drop me off at the book festival before he went off in the persuit of delicacies down at the food market!

This is my dream scenario, you know - loads of books stacked in high piles on every available surface, authors to meet and get signed copies of, new book stores to explore, discussions, shows... - and (almost) all the time in the world! Needless to say - I loved it!

Firstly, I wandered past this little antiquarian shop. I have never seen it before, so, as you might have already guessed, I spun around on a dime and went straight in. It was big, had all these lovely old books and was covered in owls! Yep, that is right - owls. Porcelain owls, wooden owls, glass owls, paper owls, pictures and drawings of owls - the place was covered in them. They were standing in between the books, hanging from the ceiling, lying in baskets, on the walls...quite astonishing! I was (and am) completely mesmerized. Believe me, I could have spent hours in there.

So colourful! Cannot wait
to read them!

As it happens, though, I was a good girl. I found three books I just had to take with me home and two old printings. I love old printings or drawings of animals, birds or plants. Anything accurate - like old biology posters from schools. These two were of a bird and of a flower - both had been a part of old books once upon a time. I will get them framed and hang them up in my library. I will post pictures later.

The rest of the time was spent roaming about between the book tents. I queued up and got several authors to sign my books - Victoria Hislop, Cecilia Samartin, Jennifer Cody Epstein and Linda Eide. Great fun to meet them! They were all so nice and even took their time to chat a little. I did not have a camera, so sadly I have no pictures of them. That is something I should remember the next time!

Sadly, I could only find one
of these in English

I also met this old man when I was waiting for Victoria Hislop. He said he was so old that he no longer had a home, and so did not have the space to store books anymore. Instead he collected signatures. He had this bunch of nice little blank cards which he got people to sign on. He was ever so cute - he just kept on talking and talking as he showed me the signatures he had got on the festival so far. An adorable man.

Last stop of the day was down on the food market where I found my boyfriend. We sat on a bench there, munching away on a trout wrap and a deer burger with some apple cider samples. Quite tasty, all of it. We stopped by my grandma on our drive home. I gave her a book I got signed for her about the history of Oslo itself by Nils Petter Thuesen, and I told her all about our day over some tea and coffee ♥