Friday throwback: cycling through snow, retro Norwegian style




It's time for another Friday Throwback - our ongoing series of posts looking at images of cyclists from The Commons on Flickr.  This week we're looking at the work of adventurous photographer Anders Beer Wilse, from Norway.  As seen in the photograph above, Wilse used his bicycle to traverse the Norwegian landscape, loaded up with 10kg plate cameras and other equipment, dressed in boots and a tweed suit.  It was in this way that Wilse traveled to his photographic assignments, even taking his bicycle as far north as Svalbard, inside the arctic circle.

Wilse was a handsome, daring, somewhat buccaneer turn of the century type; he decided to become a sailor, emigrated to the United States, and picked himself up a wife there before returning with her to Norway.  He photographed every aspect of Norse life and society (including Ibsen and Greig on their deathbeds) and his archives now reside with the National Library of Norway.

In the hand-coloured images below, the women of the mountainous region of Setesdal are seen cycling to church in their Sunday best, whilst in the photo below a cyclist gets stuck behind a car on an alpine pass that has been cleared of snow.





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