Frognerparken and Viegland Museum

Much more than a park

Frognerparken(or Vigeland Park) is the lifetime's product of one Artist, Gustav Vigeland, who died just before its completion. He modelled each of the park's 212 sculptures in full size in his studio at Frogner, now a museum, before transferring their execution to a team of masons and founders.

The park's centrepiece is a 470 tonne granite monolithic tower of 121 writhing nudes, backed by the 'circle of life', indeed a suggestive juxtaposition. Another of the park's favourite sculptures is a bronze, known locally as Sinnataggen. This petulant sour-faced boy was, along with another of Norway 's cultural icons, Munch's Scream, stolen and later returned.

The site walks you round the park and museum, and Viegland's biography uncannily mirrors the conception of the park as 'Man's journey from cradle to grave, through happiness and grief, through fantasy, hope and wishes of eternity'. Sick of living the life of an impoverished artist("I lived everywhere and nowhere, in attics and cellars and finally I had no proper food") Viegland made a Mephistophelean pact with the city of Oslo in 1921. He traded all his sculptures, drawings, woodcuts and models for a studio to be converted into a museum after his death.

www.museumsnett.no

Back to reviews