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Peter Schjeldahl contemplates Norway’s canceled controversial memorial

2017-07-28T15:42:00-04:00

What had the land done to deserve being fissured? Local residents protested that they were traumatized enough by the killer’s passage among them not to suffer a daily reminder of it, thronged by tourists. Some families of victims refused the use of their loved ones’ names, which are already enshrined on a modest monument—a suspended silver ring, in the woods—on Utøya. Last month, Norway officially canceled the project.

Memory Wound, a bold proposal by the Swedish artist Jonas Dahlberg, won a government competition for a memorial dedicated to the seventy-seven victims of a massacre committed by Andres Breivik on July 22, 2011. The artist's design called for cutting a channel across the Sørbråten peninsula, near the island of Utøya, where Breivik fatally shot sixty-nine at a summer camp and moving the excavated stone to the site in Oslo where, on the same day, a bomb that he had planted killed eight. The gap was to be faced with stone and engraved with victims' names.

Last month, due to much controversy, Norway officially canceled the project. The proposal struck some as, for one thing, an offense to blameless nature. Contrasting the project to Vietnam Memorial and Ground Zero, Peter Schjeldahl of the New Yorker points out the failure of Memory Wound, "Monuments aren’t churches. The most affecting ones enable but don’t seek to impose, fitting emotional responses. Dahlberg’s proposal, by contrast, ...

"The Clearing", memorial to Norway's July 22 attacks, opens on the tragedy's fourth anniversary

2015-07-22T19:30:00-04:00

Called Lysningen or ‘The Clearing’, it has been designed by the Bergen-based architects 3RW. [...] “It is actually much better than I had thought,.” [Jørgen Watne Frydnes, the general manager of Utøya,] said. “The frame around the woods and the silence of nature, makes it feel like a well.”

On July 22, 2011, on the island of Utøyah, a lone gunman named Anders Breivik attacked a youth summer camp run by the Norwegian Workers’ Youth League (AUF), killing 69 people. Today, on the fourth anniversary of the attack, a memorial to the victims officially opens on the island. Known as “Lysningen" (The Clearing), the memorial is designed by Bergen-based firm 3RW, and was selected through a competition hosted by AUF.

The design features a large metal ring, inscribed with the victims' names, suspended from pine trees over a clearing made by 3RW.

Vegard Grøslie Wennesland, a survivor of the Utøya attack who served on the memorial committee, says of 3RW's design: "the idea is both sophisticated and unpretentious. No matter what social, cultural or religious affiliation, you can feel welcome here. It will be a beautiful place for remembrance."

Another competition, for two public memorials – one in Utøya and one in Oslo, where Breivik perpetrated a bombing attack on the same day – was wo...

Shortlist announced for Norwegian July 22 Memorial Sites

2013-10-11T20:11:00-04:00

Eight finalists were revealed for the international competition to design two memorial sites in the Norwegian Goverment Headquarters in Oslo as well as the island of Utøya. The public art memorial sites will commemorate the victims of the Oslo bombing and the Utøya massacre on July 22, 2011 — Norway's shocking day of terror when 77 people tragically lost their lives.

Below are the candidates who will advance to the second and final stage of the competition:

Jonas Dahlberg (SE)
Jeremy Deller (UK)
Estudio SIC (ES)
Goksøyr & Martens and Snøhetta (NO)
Olav Christopher Jenssen and LPO arkitekter (NO)
Haugen/Zohar arkitekter (NO)
Paul Murdoch Architects (US)
NLÉ & Kunlé Adeyemi (NL/NG)