Audioguide Roseslottet
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Roseslottet
Experience Roseslottet, an extraordinary art installation in the forest above Oslo, with a view overlooking the city and Oslofjorden. With nearly 300 artworks, Roseslottet tells the story of when we lost democracy, freedom of speech, and human rights during World War II. The core principle of Roseslottet is to remind us that all people are born free, in contrast to what we experienced during the occupation years. The artistic expression aims to engage, challenge, and confront. In short, to bring the history to life.
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Points of interest
#1
Welcome to The Rose Castle
The Rose Castle opened in spring 2020 to mark 80 years since Norway was occupied during World War II and 75 years since liberation. The art installation is created by the brothers Vebjørn Sand and Eimund Sand and tells the story of what happened in Norway during the occupation from 1940 to 1945 and about the values we lost, democracy, the rule of law, and humanism. At The Rose Castle, long lines are drawn – from the philosophers of ancient Greece, who wrote down the fundamental thoughts on human rights, to the development of the modern democracy we have today. Visible from Oslo are the 5 sails in gold. One for each year of the war, and each sail symbolizes different parts of the resistance movement. Much of the Rose Castle is built in gold to symbolize the value of the freedom and democracy we have today. The Rose Castle is an optimistic place. We celebrate our constitution and freedom by being open every day, all year round. By learning from history, we can understand the present and look towards the future.
#2
Faces of history
The backbone of Roseslottet is the faces of history. For several years, Vebjørn Sand has traveled around meeting people who experienced the war; they are timewitnesses. All the people in this series are individuals whom Vebjørn has interviewed, and then painted portraits of. Several of the large paintings in the park are based on their stories. In the time that has passed since Vebjørn met the timewitnesses, many have passed away. Their stories are vulnerable and important to pass on. It is a crucial part of the Roseslottet project. Here, we meet, among others, Mikhaylo, who was a prisoner of war in Norway, Herman and Edith, who survived the concentration camps, Astrid Linerud, who was Norway's youngest border guide, helping refugees across the border to Sweden, and several resistance men and women, with connections to the war in Norway.
#3
The voices of humanism
Did you know that the ideas of human rights and natural law – that all people are born free - originated in ancient Greece nearly 2,500 years ago? These thoughts from ancient philosophers later inspired the French Revolution as well as the American Declaration of Independence, and laid the groundwork for the development of the modern democracy we have today. The lightening gate, through which we have passed, marks the entrance to the Greek Golden Age and antiquity. We will walk along a spiral path called the "Frozen River of Time," which connects us to the past and future. Here, we will see several vases displaying quotes from ancient philosophers, while also witnessing a stark contrast to the paintings depicting events during World War II. How far we were from these fundamental ideas over 2000 years after they were conceived is alarming. The vases are decorated with potsherds, which were used as ballots in elections in ancient Greece. The Greeks were also deeply interested in mathematics and geometry. Geometry is like music, a universal language that speaks to all. The artist behind these figures, Eimund Sand, explains that there is no Greek, American, or Russian cube, there is only one cube. Geometry also embodies values that we recognize in a well-functioning democracy. It is balanced and in equilibrium, transparent and clear, and constantly evolving. The geometric figures evolve throughout the spiral path, becoming more and more intricate, yet they remain in balance, equilibrium, and transparency, just as democracy should be.
#4
The White Rose
Once during a tour, a school student asked a question. He raised his hand and said, "Do you know which country the Nazis took first? It was Germany, the Nazis took Germany first." In the lead-up to World War II, Germany was subjected to large amounts of propaganda, and freedom of speech was stifled. A group of students from Munich tried to awaken the German population to spiritual resistance. They wrote leaflets that they distributed around German cities, urging the population to think for themselves and distance themselves from Nazism. The group became known as "The White Rose," a non-violent group that fought with words against the Nazi regime. They urged each individual to take responsibility for humanistic values – and thus to distance themselves from any totalitarian ideology. This became a dangerous threat to the Nazis, and they expended considerable resources to find out who was behind it. Eventually, the members were exposed and brought to trial. Their activities were called "the most serious attack on the Reich since the outbreak of the war." They were sentenced to death for high treason and executed by guillotine only three hours after the verdict was delivered. The Nazis considered them such a significant threat that they were executed immediately. See the portrait of Traute Lafrenz, Vebjørn Sand met her in 2004, a meeting that left a strong impression. She was one of the few key members of "The White Rose" who survived the war. She died on March 6, 2023, at the age of 103. The Rose Castle is named after these youths who used their words and freedom of speech as weapons against Nazism.
#5
Karl Johan
Do you see which street we are on here? Karl-Johan on a beautiful summer day in 1942. Do you recognize any of the people walking down the street? In the middle of the painting, we see an elderly man in a dark suit with his arms crossed. That's the artist Edvard Munch on his way to the paint store. Munch has been a great inspiration in Vebjørn's artistic career; he often used a green color when painting people who were jealous, sick, or had inner turmoil. For instance, he painted a piece called "the murderer," where the person's face is also painted in green. Vebjørn has used this green color as a quote from Munch when painting the Nazis. Do you see the green car? That's Reichskommissar Josef Terboven, the top leader of the Nazis in Norway, along with propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. They were on their way to the Parliament, which the Nazis took over as their office during the war. Behind the car, there's a boy with a red beanie. The red beanie was a secret resistance symbol, and it became forbidden to wear it. You can also spot the well-known Norwegian resistance fighter Gunnar "Kjakan" Sønsteby on his bike, double agent Sonja Wigert in a black dress, and comedian Leif Juster to the right in the picture, representing the cultural sector's spiritual mobilization against the occupation.
#6
Guernica
On April 26, 1937, the world became a forever altered place. This was the day the Spanish village of Guernica fell victim to a bombing raid unlike any seen before. After 3 and a half hours of bombing, the city was completely obliterated from the air. This was a pure act of war experimentation, carried out on a defenseless civilian population. A new fear of total annihilation from the air was created and has since hung over humanity. The nuns saw the planes first. They frantically rang the bells, trying to warn the population. Now, you can enter the room and there you can see Sister Anna - the face of humanity in the face of brutal power. There you can also see Wolfram von Richthoven, a German engineer responsible for developing new types of aircraft and bombs. He was on his way in his red car to monitor the operation – and then thoroughly analyze its psychological and material effect. From Spain, thousands of highly trained Luftwaffe personnel returned home to Germany, and in the autumn of 1939, Richthoven could bring his new aircraft and best pilots to Poland, where World War II began with an overwhelming blitzkrieg demonstration.
#7
Ellinors house
Ellinor's house tells the story of the deportation of Jews through the history of 5-year-old Ellinor Meiran. Ellinor grew up in downtown Oslo and was 5 years old in 1942. On November 26, 1942, Ellinor was arrested and taken down to Oslo's quay. There awaited the cargo ship Donau. In the first painting, we see the moment Ellinor was arrested. If you look in front of Ellinor's feet, you'll see Ellinor standing in front of the stumbling stones in memory of Ellinor, her father, and her grandmother. Vebjørn Sand has mixed time and space when he painted Ellinor in front of her own memorial. Now you can continue around the corner of the house. Ellinor was one of 529 Norwegian Jews crowded onto the cargo ship Donau that day; from there, it was a four-day journey to Stettin in today's Poland. In the next painting, we see the arrival in Stettin, and we see Ellinor in her red coat, inspired by the movie Schindler's List. From the boat, they were crammed into cattle cars and sent on a 24-hour train journey to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. The prisoners arrived at the camp in the early hours of December 1, 1942. Here they were sorted into two groups: those who could work on one side and those who could not on the other. Little 5-year-old Ellinor could not work and was therefore sent straight to the gas chamber the same night she arrived at the camp. This is the day when the most Norwegians were killed during World War II. The next painting shows the pile of all the prisoners' belongings. Upon arrival at the camp, they were stripped of everything they owned. Those sent on to work had their hair shaved off and were tattooed with a prisoner number. The prisoners were deprived of everything that made them human and everything that made them individuals; all human rights were stripped away. Now you can enter Ellinor's house. It's a bit dark, so it may take some time to adjust to the light. This room is inspired by a poet named Nelly Sachs. She was a Jewish writer who tried to accomplish the impossible task of writing beautiful poetry based on the Holocaust. In her poem "Chorus of the Abandoned Things," she describes the smoke rising from the crematorium ovens with the quote, "Ashes sleeps itself anew, into the shape of stars". Here we see the painting called "Ash sleep". It is painted with ash in the paint, and the black background is painted with the element carbon. The painting depicts the final sleep and transition to stardust, which in turn becomes new life. Now you can turn around; here is also 5-year-old Ellinor in her ash sleep.
#8
Wannsee konferansen
On the outside of Ellinor's house, we see the contrast to Ellinor's story. 15 Nazi leaders gathered in the suburb of Wannsee outside Berlin in January 1942 to discuss "The Final Solution to the Jewish Question." The meeting is known as the Wannsee Conference and is considered perhaps the greatest crime in human history. In this meeting, they reached the solution to use gas chambers and industrialize and streamline a massive genocide. The final solution they arrived at took the lives of over 6 million people. The painting is inspired by the famous painting «Hipp hipp hurra»", or "Hip, Hip, Hurrah!" by Peder Severin Krøyer. A bright and beautiful motif used as a paraphrase to tell a completely different story. In the top right corner, we see a man with a red armband, Adolf Eichmann, logistics manager for the Holocaust. During his trial in 1963, a German philosopher named Hannah Arendt was present. She described Eichmann as an exceptionally ordinary person, someone who performed regular bureaucratic tasks, but with fatal consequences. She could not see the evil in his person despite the consequences of his actions. She coined the term "the banality of evil" to describe the cruelty behind something that appears normal. In The Rose Castle, the most grotesque paintings are painted behind a beautiful facade. The artists call it the "Arendtian approach," inspired by the philosopher Hannah Arendt and "the banality of evil."
#9
Second round of the spiral path
We move further into the second round of the spiral path. Here we first encounter the war sailors in the painting "Winter." The war sailors and merchant fleet were referred to as Norway's most significant contribution to the Allied victory during World War II. About half of Norwegian merchant ships were torpedoed during the war, and approximately 1 in 10 Norwegian war sailors perished at sea. They lived with a constant threat from the torpedoes. Next, we see "London Radio." Norwegians listened clandestinely to Norwegian radio broadcasts transmitted from the BBC in London. Great Britain was a crucial ally during the war. The king and the government led the resistance from exile in London, and many Norwegian soldiers received military training. War sailors also sought refuge here, while the British relied on fuel deliveries from Norwegian tankers. Later on the round, we also notice the pianist amidst the inferno. This painting is inspired by a myth that circulated after the burning of Hammerfest in 1944. This was part of the "scorched earth" tactic, where the Nazis burned down large parts of cities and houses, destroying vast amounts of infrastructure in Northern Norway. The myth claimed that as Hammerfest burned, there was a German officer who sat down at a grand piano and played Mozart while watching the city burn. This image struck Vebjørn so profoundly that he painted this piece to highlight the madness of the "scorched earth" tactic.
#10
The Unborn's Star
In the center of Roseslottet, we find "The Unborn's Star." This star points forward to the next generations, reminding us to preserve democracy and human dignity for the future. On the sign next to the star is Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights from 1948, "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood." This is the most important message of the installation. Here at Roseslottet, some dark and serious stories are told, but we primarily aim to be an optimistic place. World War II is an example of a time when several countries allied to cooperate and fight for democracy when it was truly under pressure and freedom was threatened. Despite five grim years of war, democracy and freedom emerged victorious in the end. It gives us hope and optimism even though the values of freedom are threatened in many countries around the world today. We must be conscious of how valuable our democracy and freedom are, and Roseslottet is meant to provide us with a solid reminder of that. From the center of the spiral, we have a good view of the five golden sails. Each sail symbolizes a year of war and different parts of the resistance movement. From the left, you see the sail to commemorate the navy and war sailors, then the mountain for the resistance in Northern Norway. Far to the right is a quill for freedom of speech and civilian protection, and next to it, a spruce tree for the military resistance. In the middle stands the "King's Birch," symbolizing the king's refusal and his steadfastness for our constitution. At The Rose Castle, we say that we celebrate May 17th and our constitution every single day, all year round.
#11
Exit - The Mozart Series
The Mozart Series opened in the summer of 2021. Here we see full-size portraits of resistance women in the first part, and cultural figures who used their voices in the fight for democracy in part 2. We meet, among others, Dagny, Norway's first female paratrooper, and Eva, who led over a thousand Norwegian Milorg soldiers. Also, notice the Norwegian poet Nordahl Grieg, double agent Sonja Wigert, intelligence agents, and many more from both the organized defense and the civilian, cultural society. World War II was often referred to as "the Boys' War," and the efforts of resistance women are significantly under-communicated. In The Rose Castle, more resistance women are painted than men, precisely to highlight this part of wartime history. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart broke his employment relationship with the archbishop in 1782 and tried to live as a free artist. He is considered a pioneer of the "free artist." He created his greatest works during the Enlightenment, and his music is often described as the sound of that era. When Vebjørn Sand painted these paintings, he exclusively listened to Mozart's music and experienced finding a special rhythm in the process. Therefore, the series was named the "Mozart Series." Also, take note of the painting of Mozart further down in the series. The last thing we see before leaving is the quote "He who sleeps in a democracy wakes up in a dictatorship." It is a reminder for us living today that we cannot take our democracy and freedom for granted but must cherish and protect it for the future.