The golden castle in the forest

There are only a few people on the subway when we leave Oslo's central station. The fog that hangs over the city this morning is light, so luckily, it doesn't disturb our view as the train begins to climb the steep hills up towards Frognerseteren. It is quiet. Suddenly, the fjord and the city below us seem so small.

We drive past children playing in the schoolyard, past people who are at work and people who may be on their way there. Inside our carriage, people sit with their masks on to protect themselves and each other.

Doors open and close. Few exit and no one enters. We pass houses with grass on the roof and old, majestic trees. We're riding through the forest, like in a modern fairy tale.

The subway stops at Frognerseteren, and we go out. The fog has swallowed the city, but up here, the atmosphere is magical.

We are greeted by five luminous constructions in gold, so tall that we've seen them all the way from downtown. They symbolise the five years of the second world war when Norway was occupied, and the struggle for freedom and democracy. They are a powerful sight up close.

We walk into the ticket booth to ask for Vebjørn. Together with his brother Eimund, he is artistic director of The Rose Castle, and today he is taking us on a tour.

We're early. Vebjørn usually comes out of the woods when he has an appointment, they tell us. And that's exactly what happens. At the stroke of twelve he comes out from between the trees and meets us at the gates of his castle.

He smiles.

– Welcome to an artistic tribute to democracy.

We congratulate him on a good turnout. The Rose Castle opened after the corona virus came to town, but has attracted almost 2000 people on the busiest days.

He nods thankfully. On those days it is full from morning to evening, he tells us. Only 200 people are allowed inside at the same time. Now if only the snow would come. Can you imagine, he asks, the Rose Castle in a winter suit?

He smiles again, speaking with great enthusiasm about his project. 

– A golden castle in the forest is something everyone can relate to and know from the fairy tales of their childhood. They have passed through it in their imagination.

He informs us that right now, we are standing at the beginning of a 240 meter long spiral, equivalent to one and a half football fields, filled with art and geometry.

Adults may sense more gravity behind the project: Reminders of the damage we suffered when the Nazis came and took away all our rights.

Vebjørn explains, enthusiastically.

– It's about the values ​​we lost overnight. That is, the rule of law, democracy, human rights, humanism.

We walk through the gate, where a path flanked by several small paintings of people shows the way into the exhibition. Each of the portraits come with a story written under it.

They all look straight at us, and Vebjørn tells us who they are.

– They are time witnesses, 37 in total. People I have traveled around and met for the last three-four years. People who experienced the war in different ways.

He walks over to the painting of Kjell Grandhagen, who was their mentor until he died on 3 May last year. Vebjørn points to the text next to him.

– Here you see an excerpt from what was his last public appearance as a mentor, and why he believes that The Rose Castle is an important project. Because the values ​​we lost back then, in many ways, are again under attack.

He moves further up the row of paintings.

– This is Petra Olsen, she is the last living "lotte", or female combatant, from Sørøya in Northern Norway. She never fired a shot, but young girls, just teens really, actually participated as snipers and went up against German special forces.

He is clearly impressed.

We pass several paintings of people who have told their story to Vebjørn and who have now passed away.

– Herman Kahn here was rescued in Ebensee. U.S. forces walked past a pile of corpses and saw a hand moving. They pulled it, and 18-year-old Herman came out.

He talks about them as friends. Smiles and moves eagerly between the pictures.

– Astrid was the youngest among those who helped people across the border, only nine years old. I met her in Hattfjelldal. She would guide refugees over to Sweden, alone, through the forest.

Drizzle falls as we approach an amazing light installation.

– This is the light gate!

We photograph him and mumble something about bad weather.

Vebjørn won't have it. He strikes his arms out in an inspired manner, as if he was standing on a stage.

– But we have a free smoke machine! It's in weather like this people should visit here, it's so evocative! And that’s the point. It is a year-round project!

Other visitors glance over at him in admiration. Somewhat discreetly at first, we are Norwegians after all, but eventually it becomes too difficult for them to hide their interest.

– Bad weather?

He frowns.

He smiles and walks on, the other visitors openly walk with us now, as he stops to tell us about the sound installations.

He has a theatrical delivery, everyone listen.

And we all follow him as the motifs turn darker, and the happy colors disappear.

– These paintings show what happens when totalitarian forces break humanism and freedom.

– All such forces are the same. They want to oppress the free individual, control it or destroy it if it does not conform to their will.

He has a serious look on his face.

– And totalitarian forces come in many disguises.

We stand before a sculpture of a tall, white flower, a tribute from Vebjørn and Eimund to the non-violent resistance group called The White Rose. It was formed by students in Munich, who fought with words instead of weapons.

– The white rose symbolizes this resistance group, and hence the name The Rose Castle. It's inspired by these wonderful, brave, young Germans who tried to make their countrymen think for themselves.

All but one member of the White Rose were convicted of high treason and executed. The only survivor, Traute Lafrenz, escaped the death penalty and is still alive today, a hundred years old.

Further into the exhibition, we stop by a painting of a christening dress.

– I saw this dress in Hammerfest in Northern Norway. I am so fond of lace, so I ran over to look at the craftmanship, but then I saw what was crafted. Many small swastikas.

A real piece of lace is included in his painting, to copy the row of swastikas on the chest of the little child's dress that Vebjørn saw.

– A German soldier and a Norwegian girl had a baby, and the grandmother in Germany sent up this beautiful needlework, but then there is this brutal pattern on it.

Chills run down our spine.

From a distance, it looks like an ordinary christening dress.

He stops and points to some trees.

– Do you see those birches over there? Is there anything weird about the third one, the one that's the furthest away? I was out here one night and I thought it looked kind of strange.

We suggest that it may have been burned, or that it just looks weird because it has disappeared into the painting or something.

Nope. That's not it.

He asks the others to come and have a look.

– Look, can you see it?

We all squint in tandem.

Everyone takes a gentle step forward and look at the trees.

He leaves the question hanging in the air.

– I have made an artificial tree.

We look at each other, embarrassed by our own guesses and at the same time impressed by what he has made. He trudges on and smiles with a twinkle in his eye.

– So things are happening up here, you have to pay attention.

We sharpen our senses and run after him between paintings to keep up.

Everything here is original, painted on plastic sheets with epoxy on top to withstand weather and wind.

It must have taken a long to make all this?

He says that the biggest job has been to build and develop The Rose Castle as an installation.

– But we have found the right people to build and develop with us. People who truly see the value of the project and are excited about it.

As a touching gesture, everyone who partook in the building has either cut the invoice in half or not sent it at all.

Fact-checking the stories and writing texts for the paintings has also been a massive job, carried out by historians, scientist and the Holocaust Center and Oslo Jewish Museum.

He estimates that the project has taken three years in total. Plus a whole lifetime, as he puts it.

– Painting these pictures has been a reaction, a response. That's why there are so many of them, I guess.

He stops by a painting of a young girl.

– She fell in love with a German soldier. We call her Gunvor, because we aren't allowed to use her real name. She died five years ago.

It's still a sore topic for many, and difficult to talk about, he says. In recent times, the girls who entered romantic relations with Germans have mostly been met with sympathy. But right after the war they had their hair cut of in public, an act of humiliation that is burnt into the history books. Vebjørn mentions that some of the girls who were with German soldiers in France were shot.

He looks at his painting.

– This is seen through the eyes of her boyfriend, you can see how in love they are. And here's their daughter lying in the pram. She actually appeared for me recently! So now I'll paint her as a time witness as well.

We move on. He shows us paintings of people who resisted and fought in their own way. From standing in the front line, to making packed lunches that they put along the roads, or under the fences of the prison camps.

And he tells of the people who were dragged out of their homes and killed because they were Jews.

The German artist Gunter Demnig has made memorials for the Jews who were killed in the Nazi Holocaust. Small brass stones called stumbling stones, placed outside the homes of those who were taken.

Each stone bears a name and year of birth, as well as the date and place of where the person the stone represents was killed.

Vebjørn stops in front of a painting of a little girl in a red coat, who has a set of stumbling stones at her feet.

– This is Ellinor Meiran, she was picked up on 26 November 1942 and brought to DS "Donau".

DS "Donau" was responsible for the largest single deportation of Norwegian Jews during the war. When they left the harbor in Oslo that day in 1942, there were 532 Jews on board: 302 men, 188 women and 42 children. Of all those, only nine men survived World War II.

Vebjørn looks at Ellinor.

– See this stumbling stone by her feet? It's her own.

Behind Ellinor is the car who will take her to DS Donau.

She is already dead, she just doesn't know it yet.

The story about Ellinor is the one that has left the biggest mark on him, he says. After obtaining her story at the Jewish Museum, he went to see her stumbling stone.

– When I saw her stone, I thought I am going to do everything that I can for her, I will make her Norway's most famous five-year-old.

She was only five years old?

He answers quickly.

– Five years. Five years.

He walks around this little house that he has built for her, which tells of Ellinor's journey.

– Here is the last picture from Auschwitz, here she is in a red coat, by a pile of other people's clothes and shoes outside the gas chambers. They were told that they were going to take a shower, to trick them into walking inside.

He tells us about a Jewish author named Nelly Sachs, and a beautiful poem she has written about the Holocaust.

He looks at us.

– Ashes sleep to a new star shape, she writes.

He reads the poem to us in German as well.

It's hard not to tear up.

He looks at the small house on which the paintings hang.

– Inside Ellinor's house, it's quiet, we whisper. And you can meet Ellinor.

He shows us the way in.

– First you will see ashes sleep, and finally you will see Ellinor in her sleep.

We enter the house. It is completely dark, but beautiful voices draws us into the room, like a choir in a church. The song gets louder as we arrive at the painting of Ellinor sleeping. She is surrounded by angelic singing. As if they're protecting her in here.

On the wall outside of Ellinor's house hangs a large painting of old men toasting over a table with plenty of food and beverages.

– This is from the Wannsee conference in 1942, where the Nazis developed a plan for "a total solution of the Jewish question", as they phrased it.

– The picture tells of this cruel conference which is the absolute low point in the history of Europe, where the logistics and implementation of the Holocaust were set in motion. Behind a festive and composed facade complete cruelty hides, that is why I have painted this in an idyllic way.

We look up, past the painting of the celebration, and out towards the city.

The painting of Ellinor stands on the edge, overlooking the fjord.

– When the weather is clear up here, you can look down to where things happened, as with Ellinor. You can see where the DS "Donau" sailed away with her.

Raindrops make comforting sounds on our jackets.

We gather around the human rights declaration, right next to the light installation The Star of the Unborn.

He says that he just had a group of people from the UN here who work with human rights.

– I told them what I do when school classes come to visit. I usually say one sentence of the human rights declaration, and the children say the next. Then the UN workers, grown people I may add, looked at me and asked if I please could do that with them as well.

He looks touched.

– And I was like yeeees, so we did it together. It was fantastic!

The other visitors are listening, with glitter in their eyes.

He mentions that when they have school classes visiting, he usually tells them that here at The Rose Castle they celebrate 17 May, Norway’s Constitution Day, every day all year round.

– I also tell them that what we cheer for when we wave our flags and congratulate each other on that day, is our freedom. That's what we celebrate.

He raises his voice, as if we are the kids he is speaking to.

– And then I ask them, who will carry on these golden treasures, this precious thing, our freedom, into the future- for the future generations? And then they all shout "that's us, that's us!"

He smiles.

– And that's the big story.

Suddenly it's all so clear to all of us out here in the rain with him.

All of this is for them. It's for the youth.

– We use art, theater, dance, music and visual arts to tell stories about these values. And geometry, which is the language of the ancient Greeks.

– Geometric shapes are open, in balance, transparent and in equilibrium. Just like a democratic society must be for it to work. They become the very symbol of democracy. Symbols of freedom. Everyone has to agree on that, it's math.

He talks about conflicts not being resolved by arms, power or violence, but by a democratic culture, in a democratic state of mind.

– Conflicts must be solved in the spirit of humanism, where the individual is sovereign at the top, able to challenge the system as much as she wants. It is one of the foundations of democracy, freedom of speech. That’s the spirit of The Rose Castle.

– This is what Eimund and I are talking about, that should sink into the heart, mind and soul of our visitors. We want all of our visitors to leave The Rose Castle as freshly enlightened and inspired human beings.

He looks at all of us who are out here listening to him.

– We are aware of all this. These are things we know, but we still need to remind ourselves of them, constantly. In several ways, that is, through art.

The weather is starting to get quite sour, even Vebjørn has to agree, he is freezing now too.

He had an accident with the washing machine and the lining in his jacket got destroyed.

New visitors on their way in light up when they see the artist himself on site. What a welcoming committee! They strike up a conversation, and Vebjørn looks as thrilled as they do.

Asked how long The Rose Castle will be open, Vebjørn says that it is solidly built and can stand for a long time. The plan is to keep it up here until the end of 2025.

We look up at The King Birch, one of the five golden constructions. It is described as a luminous backbone to remind us that these principles only live as long as we believe in them.

Maybe The Rose Castle should stay forever.

We thank him for the (semi) private tour, and run from the rain towards the subway.

Vebjørn stays behind in his golden castle in the forest.

We can see it from the city.

So we never forget all those who risked and lost their lives for our freedom.