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Frogner Park Vigeland Installation View. Photo by Godot13 –

Top 10 Outstanding Facts about The Vigeland Park

Most parks around the world are dedicated to areas for children to play, the general public to leisurely stroll through its lush gardens, and/or wild animals to roam freely and feed, while others incorporate all of the above. Few parks, however, are built specifically to showcase and protect a single artist and their work.

One such park is Vigeland Park. Let us embark on a journey to discover what makes the Top 10 Outstanding Facts about the Vigeland Park.

1. The World’s Biggest Sculpture Park

A Sculpture von Gustav Vigeland in Frogner park. Photo by 5snake5 –

Vigeland Park is the world’s largest sculpture park created by a single artist, and  it spans over 43 hectares. It is a must-see park that all tourists visiting Oslo should check off their bucket lists while they are there.

The park is open all year, all seasons, and is free to visitors. With over 1.9 million visitors per year, this makes it Norway’s most visited and main attraction.

2. Inscribed in the Heritage Act

The Heritage Act gives cultural significance to monuments and antiquities by establishing requirements for protecting access to areas and agreements on how to protect and preserve ancient monuments and cultural relics before the Norwegian Reformation of 1537.

The Heritage Act was later amended to include structures over 100 years in 1929. The Vigelandsanlegget or Vigeland park became the first to be protected under the Heritage Act on February 13, 2009, in Norway.

3. The park is named after its founder

Gustav Vigeland in 1929. photo by Andres beer Wilse –

Gustav Vigeland, who was born Adolf Gustav Thorsen in 1869 and died in 1943, is the inspiration for Vigeland Installation Park. He is revered in Norwegian culture for his creative and imaginative abilities as both a sculptor and designer of the Nobel Peace Prize medal.

He created over 200 sculptures during his lifetime. His work is an experimental sculpting style influenced by ancient and Renaissance themes of death and man-woman relationships.

Gustav is best known for the Vigeland installation, in which he donated to the city of Oslo all of his subsequent works, including sculptures, models, drawings, and engravings.

4. Vigeland Park’s Funny Story

Great things can happen by chance, and Vigeland Park is one of them. When Norway gained independence from Sweden in 1905, the public wanted to erase all memories of anything Swedish from their capital city, so they chose to undergo a total transformation of rebirth by showcasing Norwegian art, important figures, and heritage.

To accomplish this, they enlisted the help of a well-known sculptor at the time, who happened to be none other than Vigeland, who was trained in the Reinassance art during his travels in Italy.

Following numerous contracts for pieces to be created and placed throughout the city, he proposed a massive fountain be placed in Eidsvolls Plass square in front of the Parliament building, but this was not welcomed due to a disagreement over the location, resulting in the project’s postponement.

5.The Park Does Not Exist

Gustav Vigeland Man and Woman . Photo by Gustav Vigeland –

In essence, Vigeland Park does not exist. This is because, according to the director of the Oslo Museum, Lars Roede, the name Vigeland Park is the name given to the park by tourists.

The Park’s original name is Frogner Manor, and the sculptor installations by Vigeland are what tourists refer to it as Vigeland Park or Vigeland Sculptor Park.

The installations form part of the larger Frogner park, which was built between 1924 and 1943.The Frogner Manor was much smaller and was remodeled as a decorative park by Hans Jacob Scheel in the 18th century.

Later in the nineteenth century, Benjamin Wegner transformed it into a romantic park, which Christiania municipality later purchased and transformed into a public park.

6. Sculptors Speak for Themselves

Gustav Vigeland vigelandpark . hoto by Wasielgallery –

The park contains over 200 sculptures. Notably, they are all naked and take on a variety of strange and wonderful shapes and themes.

Each sculpture is unique in its own way and shares nothing in common with the others. This is portrayed through the various poses, which are meant to explore human experience in its purest form. There are also sculptures of flying babies, dead bodies, and dancing women.

7. Characteristics of the Monolith

The Monolith is one of the most recognizable sculpture features in the park, with 14-meter-tall pillars made of bodies going through various stages of their lives. What makes it unique is that all of these figurines of over a hundred people are carved from a single piece of granite and are competing for the top.

The Heap of Bodies contains both children and adults.

8. Good Luck and or Not so Good

Ouebvre de Gustav Vigeland. photo by dalbera –

It is believed that touching any of the statues will bring you good fortune. With many of the sculptors depicting happy human emotions, one should keep an eye out for Sinnataggen, an angry baby with clenched fists, which is one of the park’s most famous statues.

The baby’s hands are shining because most visitors touch its hands in the hope of bringing good luck and leaving their anger with the child.

This has instead raised concerns among local experts and park attendees believing that touching the statue would ruin it, because touching it prevents the hands from naturally oxidizing, a process that occurs to the rest of the statue.

9. There is nearly an Unknown Museum in the park

One thing that visitors and tourists fail to notice is that the park itself is a sort of open museum. Despite this oversight, most visitors are unaware that there is an actual museum inside, the Vigeland Museum.

10 . The Park’s Main Gain

The main Gate has five large gates, two copper-roofed gates, and two other pedestrian gates, both adorned with weather vanes.

The main gate connects with the Bridge which was the first part to be open to the public in 1940. The park is busy usually in the afternoon so the best time to visit is in the morning after 4 p. or early morning before 10.30 am.

It takes more than an hour to walk the Vigeland part of the park and a maximum of two to three hours through the whole park.