A sculpture park in the woods above the fjord, on the hillside where Munch says he heard the scream.
Ekeberg is the wooded ridge on the eastern side of the fjord, directly above Gamlebyen, and since 2013 it has held a free sculpture park.
The Scream
Munch described the experience behind the painting in his diary:
“I was walking along the road with two friends — the sun was setting — suddenly the sky turned blood red… I stood there trembling with anxiety — and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature.”
The road is generally identified as the one along this ridge, and the view — the fjord, the two shapes that appear in the painting as the shoreline and the hills — matches from here.
There is a marked viewpoint on the path. It is worth finding, and it is not signposted as insistently as it should be.
The sculpture
The collection was assembled and funded by the businessman and collector Christian Ringnes, given to the city, and it is contemporary and international.
Louise Bourgeois, Salvador Dalí, Auguste Rodin, Sarah Lucas, Damien Hirst, Marina Abramović, Tony Cragg, Jenny Holzer, James Turrell and around thirty others.
The theme, stated openly, is the female form, which was contested from the start — critics argued a park about women assembled and paid for by one wealthy man was an odd proposition, and the debate was loud. Several works engage with that directly.
The placement is the best thing about it. Pieces are scattered through mature woodland on winding paths, mostly unsignposted, so you come round a corner and find one. Turrell’s Skyspace, a chamber with an aperture cut to the sky, is the one to seek out and needs dusk or dawn.
Older than any of it
The ridge has rock carvings from the Bronze Age and earlier — around 5,000 years old — and there are traces of Iron Age settlement.
There is also a heavy presence of the Second World War: German gun emplacements and bunkers are still in the woods.
Ekebergsletta, the open field below, hosts Norway Cup each summer — one of the largest youth football tournaments in the world, with tens of thousands of children camping on the grass.
The view
The main terrace looks straight across the fjord to the Opera House, Barcode, Akershus and the islands. It is the classic photograph of Oslo and it is free.
There is a restaurant in a 1929 functionalist building on the terrace, which is good and expensive.
Practical
Free, unfenced, open at all hours.
Tram 13 or 19 from the centre — ten minutes, and the tram climbs steeply enough to be a small event in itself.
Walking up from Gamlebyen takes about twenty minutes and is steep. Walking down to the Opera House afterwards is easy and pleasant.
Paths are woodland paths: uneven, rooty, and slippery in wet weather.
