island hopping around the oslo fjord.
A few years ago my husband and I had a short Autumn city break to Oslo and it quickly became my favourite city in the world. Oslo is a beautiful, clean, and friendly city with a perfect balance of culture and nature. It has amazing art galleries (Edvard Munch has always been a favourite of mine), museums, restaurants, and of course the stunning fjord.
One morning during our short trip we decided to get up extra early and take the first ferry out of Oslo Harbour to island hop around the fjord. Our first stop was Hovedøya and we had the whole island to ourselves. It was a bright day without a cloud in the sky and the deciduous trees were changing colour and dropping their leaves. We explored the old monastery ruins and came across a beautiful empty beach where we skimmed stones along the water and searched the many rockpools. I felt so happy and content on that beach that it has become my go-to ‘happy place’ when I am having a stressful day (in my mind of course, as Norway unfortunately remains too far away for a day trip!).
After Hovedøya we hopped back on to the ferry and on to the island of Gressholmen, a more rustic and wild island where we explored the forests, climbed the hills and took in the beautiful panoramic views of the fjord. Our final stop was the island of Lindøya, a residential island covered with quaint colourful cottages, so of course I dreamt of packing up our life at home and moving to this lovely little island where we could appreciate the fjord every day.
I would love to return to Oslo again one day and search some of the other islands in the fjord. Although I am sure they are visited by many tourists in the summer, on that day in October they felt like a romantic hidden escape from normal day-to-day life.
When I started surface pattern design I knew I needed to design a collection inspired by our day on the islands and just hoped I could do it justice! I created surface patterns based on many of the sights of that day including the rockpools, forests, leaves, seashells and boats, available in two colour palettes - one based on the oranges, yellows and maroons of Autumn, and one based on the greens and blues of Spring.
You can find my complete Oslo Fjord pattern collection here (available for licensing).
