The University Aula

Located between the Storting and the Royal Palace, on Karl Johan, Oslo’s main street, we find the old buildings of the University of Oslo. Architecturally, they are the most sublime buildings to be completed in Norway during the 19th century. The foundation stone was laid on 2 September 1841, but the buildings were not completed until 1853. If we climb the steps of the middle building, Domus Media, we come to the University Aula, where the Abel prize is awarded. As we enter the Aula, we find ourselves facing Edvard Munch’s mural, The Sun (Solen).

© All fotos: Munch-museet / Munch-Ellingsen gruppen / BONO

The Sun is the source of light and life from which the decorations in the Aula derive and around which they are unified. It portrays life’s creation and perpetuation. It bears witness to a Munch, who had become a lover of life. The sun’s life-giving rays are projected out powerfully over the entire field of the mural. The sun has become an enormous, white-hot disc. The sun’s rays carry over into the murals on the sidewalls of the stage, Spirits in The Flood of Light (Genier i lysflommen) and Awakening Men in The Flood of Light (Våknende menn i lysflommen).

To our right we see the mural, History (Historien). Munch himself said that it "depicts a remote and apparently historical landscape, in which an old man from the fjords, who has prospered through many long years of toil, now sits absorbed in a wealth of memories and relates them to a fascinated boy. […]"

History depicts more than just history. It represents knowledge and wisdom in their entirety." Munch exalts the people and landscape above the everyday humdrum by giving them simplified, classical features. The old man can be said to symbolise the past, through which experience and knowledge are communicated to younger generations.

On the opposite wall, Munch depicts a mature woman and child who symbolise the future. Here, the severe, ice blue coastal landscape has been replaced with a lush scene from the interior in all its summertime fertility. This mural has been given the title, Alma Mater, which is Latin for "nourishing mother". Through the ages, Alma Mater has also been a designation for the university.

As a frame around History, we see the murals New Rays – Physics (Nye stråler) and Chemistry (Kjemi). They can be interpreted as a homage to science, represented here by the two branches of physics and chemistry.

Likewise, Alma Mater is framed by Harvesting Women (Høstende kvinner) and The Source (Kilden). They can be interpreted as symbols of knowledge and experience: the tree of knowledge and the source of wisdom.

Munch had this to say about the murals in the Aula: "I wanted the decorations to form a complete and independent world of ideas, and I wanted their visual expression to be both distinctively Norwegian and universally human."

Edvard Munch (1863 – 1944) decorated the walls of the University Aula during the years 1909 to 1916.