AN ARTIST'S PARK

FROGNER PARK

I’ve visited several sculpture gardens but never one like Frogner Park in Oslo, Norway. The park is much loved and respected with no fences, police or graffiti. The park is large requiring a good while to wander and to see the Vigeland sculpture collection. Steps lined with voluptuous stone figures, is a popular place to sit, congregate and contemplate.

There was a light rain on arrival when we disembarked our ferry, but fortunately it stopped mid morning and remained clear the rest of the day. The 75-acre park holds the life works of Gustav Vigeland (1869-1943). In 1921 he made a deal with the city that in exchange for a studio and support he would beautify the city with a sculpture garden. He worked on site from 1924-1943. Each of the bronze or granite figures is unique. There are 600 figures in all. He also designed the landscaping.

Gustav Vigeland first visited Oslo in 1899.  He drafted plans for a fountain and presented them to the city in 1905, but the project was rejected. However, in 1914 he was asked to do the fountain, but by then his plans had expanded. WW II interrupted the completion of the park, but it was finished in 1960.

            

There is only one Vigeland sculpture outside Norway and that is in a Norwegian community in Fargo, North Dakota. There are an additional twenty sculptures in Norway outside of Oslo. Otherwise his life’s work is in the park. He married twice and had children by his first wife. After that divorce he lost contact with his children. He said they distracted him and interrupted his creative process. When he died he left everything to the city which was fine with his children who felt they never had a father. Vigeland took that name after his grandfather’s farm

          

  A 100-yard-long bridge over the river has four columns, one on each corner. Three depict man fighting a lizard, but in the fourth one a woman  succumbs to the lizard’s embrace. The theme of the entire collection is the relationship between people. In addition there are 59 sculptures along the bridge rails. Off to one side of the bridge is a circle with nine children who represent the nine months of pregnancy.

        

    A symmetrical rose garden, located half way between the beginning of the bridge and the monolith, represents eternal life. Then comes the fountain of life—his water fountain. Six figures hold up the fountain, the burden of life. The fountain is surrounded by twenty trees of life. The figures on the trees depict life from birth to death, the seasons of life: childhood, young love, adulthood, and the winter of life. Sixty bronze reliefs around the basin develop the theme further. The large patio surrounding the fountain contain 150,000 pieces of black and white granite forming a mosaic with many twists and turns representing the labyrinth of life.

           

The world’s largest monolith is the centerpiece of the park. Thirty-six large monoliths surround it, each carved from a solid piece of granite, again representing the cycle of life. The monolith and its 121 single figures is cut out of a single piece of granite. It took three stonecutters fourteen years working daily to complete the 180-ton, 50-foot tall erection. Vigeland lived to see the monolith raised.

         

   The entire park is a masterpiece and it was a delightful visit that took several hours. There was so much to see and absorb.