On May 7, 1994, Norway’s most famous masterpiece, The Scream by Edvard Munch, was finally recovered. The painting had been missing for nearly three months, following a daring yet embarrassing heist for the museum.
The drama began on February 12, 1994, on the opening day of the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer. While the world’s attention was on the athletes, two thieves were focused on the National Gallery in Oslo. In only 50 seconds, the burglars climbed through a window, cut the wire holding the 1893 masterpiece to the wall, and vanished.
The thieves left behind a note that simply read, “Thousand thanks for the bad security!”
Art experts were immediately concerned because The Scream is painted with tempera and pastels on fragile, thin paper, and many feared it would be easily damaged.
A few days after the theft, an anti-abortion group claimed they would return the painting if Norwegian television aired an anti-abortion film. This claim was later proven false. By March, the government received a $1 million ransom demand. However, officials refused to pay, as there was no proof that the demand came from the actual thieves.
Eventually, investigators found four pieces of the painting’s frame in Nittedal, a suburb of Oslo. This discovery included a cryptic message suggesting the thieves were still looking to negotiate a ransom.
The search finally ended on May 7, 1994. After an initial ransom offer, police found the painting undamaged at a hotel in Asgardstrand, located about 40 miles south of Oslo. Three Norwegians were arrested.
Among those later convicted was Paal Enger, a man who was already known to police for stealing another Munch work, The Vampire, back in 1988. Enger was sentenced to six-and-a-half years in prison. He later escaped during a field trip in 1999 and was caught 12 days later wearing a blond wig and sunglasses while trying to buy a train ticket to Denmark.
The Artist of The Scream, Edvard Munch, was born in 1863. His childhood was marked by the loss of family members to illness. This trauma influenced his “Frieze of Life” series, which explored themes of sickness, death, fear, and melancholy. Munch created four versions of the Scream, and it remains the most famous example of this emotionally charged style.
In August 2004, another version of The Scream was stolen by armed robbers from the Munch Museum in Oslo. While that version was eventually recovered in 2006 with minor tears, the 1994 recovery remains one of the most famous.
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