there is but tissue paper between sanity and madness

Our first encounter with Vigeland's work was walking back to our hotel the first night we were in Oslo. We came across a statue of a man named Rikard Nordraak (we didn't know who he was at the time, it turns out he was a composer). Nothing odd about statues of famous Norwegians in Oslo, except this statue was surrounded by an ornate fence, and at the front of the fence were two extremely fierce looking biomechanical demons.

The scary thing about these demons is that they were chained the to concrete with actual chains, bound to collars around their necks and wrists. They were extremely satanic looking and we made a lot of jokes about who the guy was and whether the demons were keeping something in or out. Little did we know, the satanicness was just beginning.

My second encounter with Vigeland was just outside the national gallery on Sunday, where this extremely cool sculpture was to be found in the garden. I liked it immediately and took this photo of it.

We'd been sort of heading towards something Amanda had told us about that was obliquely referred to as the 'sculpture park'- sounded pretty cool. When we first entered the park I recognised the same metalwork on the gateways as from the demons protecting Nordraak's statue. This tied it all together and for the first time I heard the name Vigeland- the place we were in was Vigelandparke.

Vigelandpark has a very subtle progression. It starts with basic nude statues of the type you see all over Oslo. Several of them were quite nice, lovers holding each other, parents with children. Then you begin to realize that they are getting progressively darker in theme. Your first big shock is the man who is drop-kicking a baby. The baby's face is extremely pleased about this. There's a similar one with a horse kicking a baby a little down the way.

Then you see death separating the lovers.

Then you see a demon sinking its teeth into the neck of a woman.

Then you see......the 60-foot column of human bodies piled atop one another, dominating the skyline.

Then you say: "Holy crap!" and begin to seriously wonder if this place is, in fact, some kind of summoning temple for calling forth the minions of Hell into the earthly plane.

Then you ride some of the statues.

On the outskirts of the park was a very cool museum that used to be Vigeland's house (indeed, his ashes are interred there at his request), but is now dedicated to showing his life's work, and so it filled with all of the plaster models Vigeland used to model the bronze statues in the park. It was a very cool exhibition, and one thing Rob and I kept saying over and over was that it was quite amazing that so many people worked so hard together to make something so dark and so bleak- but it was also kind of inspiring, how much one man had bought into creation. He's the Gaudi of Oslo. The HR Giger of the early 20th century.

Now, when people think Paris they think of going to the Eiffel tower, when they think Athens they think of the Acropolis- every city has its 'signature attraction'- not always the best, just the most well known. I think of think that, for me, Vigeland park was Oslo's signature attraction. I liked Oslo and thought it was a neat city, but I would consider Vigeland park to be an attraction so stunning and interesting that it'd be worth going to Oslo just to see these artworks. Which is why I'm suprised I never heard of them.

But now you've heard of them.

So go see.

d

ps- I took a short video in the Vigeland museum- it's a 'flythrough' of the model of the park. It's very Lord of the Rings, give it a look if you've got some bandwidth lying around.