This is Frogner Park in Oslo. One of the key installations in Frogner Park is the Vigeland Installation, commonly called Vigeland Sculpture Park. The sculpture area covers 80 acres and features 212 bronze, granite, and wrought iron sculptures with more than 758 figures in total. All sculptures were designed by Norwegian sculptor Gustav Vigeland (1869 – 1943). Vigeland made a deal in the 1920’s to donate all his works, including future works, to the city of Oslo. In return, he was given the park and a studio where he could live and work. His studio today is the Gustav Vigeland Museum. Vigeland also designed the entire sculpture park area, not just the sculptures, but he died just before its completion and opening. The sculpture park is free and has over a million visitors a year. We visited here on a slightly rainy day but it was a great visit.

The main theme of the sculpture park is the circle of life. For that reason, Vigeland displayed all sculptures, except the one of himself, without clothes. He wanted his figures to be timeless and not to resemble people from the 1920’s or 1930’s. While he died just before the park’s completion and opening, the resulting installation is true to the way that Vigeland visualized it.

The first section of Vigeland’s park is the Main Gate. It is behind us in the first photo. The first photo is The Bridge portion of his park. The Bridge has 58 bronze sculptures, on either side of the bridge.

Our guide told us that Vigeland was somewhat of a visionary and worked outside the boundaries of the ‘norms’ up to that time. Evidently, and I can believe it, sculptures of adults and children up to Vigeland’s time were always with a woman and the children. No one showed men with children. Many of Vigeland’s sculptures show men with children, something that was evidently new to the world. The man in the second photo is perhaps fighting off flying babies and maybe even drop-kicking one of them. This is not the most famous man and children sculpture but I liked the man with four babies as it reminded me of me and my four grandchildren, which sometimes overcome me. But I have never drop-kicked any of them.

The Fountain is in the third photo, with The Bridge and the Main Gate behind it. The Fountain is surrounded by 20 sculpted trees with sculptures that show Vigeland’s four main stages of life: childhood, adulthood, parenthood, and old people. Also, the ground around the fountain is surrounded by 20,000 square feet of mosaic in black and white granite. The geometrical pattern shapes an almost 10,000-foot-long labyrinth. Vigeland’s intention of the labyrinth was to show all the difficult roads and all the blind alleys that people have to go through in their lives. Vigeland wanted us to know that, “You can find the right way out of life’s labyrinth with patience.”

The Monolith is in the fourth photo. It stands at the highest point of the park. It is one piece of granite weighing several hundred tons. Vigeland created a clay model and it took three stone masons 14 years to complete the carving. The monument stands 46 feet tall and depicts some 121 human figures climbing over each other, desperate to reach the top. 36 other figure groups reside on the elevation representing his “circle of life” theme. As you walk around the Monolith, you see the circle of life carved in granite, from infants to old age, doing age-appropriate behaviors.

I chose the last photo for several reasons. This sculpture is at the end of the circle of life around the Monolith. Taking a cue from our local guide, I made this assumption on my own. Our guide said that Vigeland was original in sculpting statues of men and babies. I determined that Vigeland must have been equally original in sculpting old people. I cannot ever remember seeing a sculpture of people as old as in this statue. Seeing this, the circle of life sort of hit home with me.