Hell

Guri Skuggen: 

Almost everyone in Norway knows who Vigeland was, but they usually associate him with Sinnataggen, the Monolith and the sculptures in Vigelandsparken... The fact that he did so much more, and that his art was so different in the 1890s, is very exciting. 

 

Narrator: 

"Hell" was the first major work that made people notice Gustav Vigeland, says Guri Skuggen, curator at the Vigeland Museum. 

 

Guri Skuggen: 

This work is considered one of Vigeland's main works from his youth. He modeled it when he was 25 years old, as a relatively young artist… 

 

Narrator: 

"Hell" was cast in plaster in 1894 and then in bronze in 1897. This was long before Vigeland became Norway's most famous sculptor. 

And unlike Vigeland's later, well-known sculptures, this is a relief. Meaning that the figures expand halfway out of the flat surface. 

 

Guri Skuggen: 

If you start to look at the details of the people in the relief, you see there is a lot of suffering. They writhe in pain. They are not in a good place. 

Some of them are trying to stretch their arms up, trying to beg for mercy. While others look like they are almost plunging down into the underworld. 

 

Narrator: 

In the middle there’s a man sitting with his head in his hands. A figure that Vigeland himself called Satan. But in Vigeland's “Hell”, Satan is not evil, he also suffers. 

 

Guri Skuggen: 

The thing about Vigeland's “Hell” relief is that, in Vigeland's time, it wasn't really interpreted as a biblical motif, but as a motif about life. 

This was made in 1894, and at that time there was a tendency to focus on the life of the soul. So, I think that even though Vigeland called this middle figure Satan, it was in a way about a person struggling with a kind of inner anxiety and despair.