Ekeberg Sculpture Park

This is the exact spot where Edvard Munch felt an infinite scream pass through nature. In 1893, he was walking along Valhallveien road on Ekeberg Hill when the sunset over the Oslofjord triggered the existential terror that became The Scream. At the foot of the hill, his sister Laura Catherine was a patient in the mental asylum. The sky was red, the fjord was dark, and Munch's anxiety crystallized into the most famous painting of psychological anguish ever made. Marina Abramović later created her own interpretation of The Scream at the exact same viewpoint. It's still there.

But Ekeberg's history goes much further back than Munch. Prehistoric rock carvings on the hillside are four to five thousand years old — animal figures, human forms, and bird traps scratched into stone by people who lived here in the Iron Age. The hill has been continuously inhabited for millennia, making it one of Oslo's oldest settled areas.

The modern sculpture park opened in 2013, funded by property mogul and art collector Christian Ringnes. Forty-seven sculptures by forty-three internationally renowned artists are scattered through the forested hillside: Dalí, Rodin, Damien Hirst, Louise Bourgeois, James Turrell, Jenny Holzer, and the Chapman Brothers, among others. Turrell's Skyspace installation alone is worth the visit. The park was controversial — critics questioned a private art collection on public land, and feminist scholars took issue with the collection's focus on the female form — but it's free, open twenty-four hours, and the combination of world-class contemporary art with ancient rock carvings and one of the best views in Oslo is hard to argue with.

Come at sunset. Stand where Munch stood. Look out over the fjord. You probably won't scream, but you'll understand why he did.