Writer/director Mike Leigh has confessed that this sequence contains the single most egregious historical error in Topsy-Turvy (an otherwise impeccably researched film): in 1884-5, when this story takes place, the city in Norway was named Kristiania, not Oslo. According to the British Museum website: "Oslo was founded in 1024. In 1624, it was renamed Christiania after the Danish king; in 1877, the spelling was altered to Kristiania. In 1925, it reverted to [the] original medieval name of Oslo." (Norway had become completely independent from Denmark in 1905.) 🙂
