Why does this memorial to one of the world's most famous playwrights look like... that?

Most of us reading this blog have iPhones, so I assume you’re probably familiar with the memories feature in the photos app. Every so often, it likes to remind you of a picture you took in the past: it could be an anniversary of something, a collage of your pets, or just a random day.

Or it could be this.

This is from when my mom and I (hi mom) visited Bergen, a city in Norway, after I finished college. At first, I just had a good laugh at the exophthalmic effigy and moved on, but I then realized that I was actually somewhat familiar with the subject.1 

If annoying first-year theater students won’t shut up about Shakespeare, Henrik Ibsen is the one the second-year theater students won’t shut up about. There’s a solid chance you’ve come across some of his work without realizing it; his plays are some of the most produced in the world, and according to some sources, he might be considered the most influential playwright in the world after Shakespeare.2 

If you’re chronically online, the chances you’ve encountered him by accident are even greater. Did you see clips of Jessica Chastain spinning like a record player on Broadway? That was A Doll’s House, written by Ibsen. The movie that Nia DaCosta (justifiably) left Marvel to make while The Marvels was mired in post-production, according to that crazy Variety exposé? That’s Hedda, based on an Ibsen play. The play that Tom Hiddleston was in that got some unexpected press because some gal (apparently) orgasmed during the show? That… is not Ibsen, that’s Harold Pinter, I’m just putting this in to issue a public correction to whoever I told that was Ibsen. But if you got excited about our greatest connoisseur of ambiguous disorders taking it to the stage, that actually is an Ibsen joint.3

If I was doing this post for a class or something, here’s where I’d put a biography of the guy. I don’t think any of you want to read that, and I don’t really want to write it.4 What’s important to say here is that not only did he just write a metric ton of plays, but he’s also known for really establishing what’s called “realism.” Usually, people will define realism as something like “being more true to life,” which I find to be pretty useless.5 It’s more helpful to me to understand it by comparison. To see exactly what I mean here, take note that in one of Ibsen’s first (successful) plays, Peer Gynt, the protagonist:

• embarrasses himself at a wedding

• runs away to the mountains (this is actually pretty realistic)

• is offered the chance to marry a troll king’s daughter in his dreams

• psychically impregnates a woman, also in his dreams

• runs away again, this time to Morocco for real this time

• tries to help the Turks stop a Greek revolt, fails, gets robbed

• gets shipwrecked

• is threatened by someone sent by actual God with his soul being melted down into a coin if he can’t justify his existence

• is forgiven and redeemed by the bride whose wedding he humiliated himself at in act 1

By comparison, in one of Ibsen’s last plays, The Master Builder, the protagonist:

• runs into a young woman he used to know on the street

• has an emotional affair

• falls off a roof and dies

In short, in Ibsen’s “realistic” works, you’re not going to get trolls even in dream sequences, but you will get a lot of adultery.6 I take note of Ibsen being more known for realism for one main reason: why did the sculptor make him look like this?

It’s such a departure from what you’d expect out of a statue of a guy who was all about realism that it must mean something. Did the sculptor have beef with the guy? Was he just having a laugh? Unfortunately, when I tried to uncover a possible story behind the statue, I couldn’t find much, despite my very polished google skills (not to brag). Also, I don’t speak Norwegian, which didn’t help.7 

What I did manage to find is that it was sculpted by a guy named Nils Aas, who also helped design some of the country’s currency. The Bergen city website describes the statue as “large and caricatured,” with “good control over what is going on down in Losjebakken [the area it’s located].”8 Seems fairly obvious. A. Davey on Flickr says he “looks possessed”—also fairly obvious.

I was getting pretty much nowhere, so I had two options: reach out to Norwegian art experts who probably don’t have time to deal with dumb Americans, or give up and make peace with the unknowable.

So I sent the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design in Oslo a nice email. Believe it or not, they actually responded—and forwarded me to the National Museum Library, who also responded, even though they were under no obligation at all to do so. It turns out, I’m not the only one who’s having some trouble finding concrete information about this statue, and it looks like there aren’t any books in English that discuss it. But one of the librarians was able to translate this section in the Norwegian Encyclopedia for me, which I can now share with you:

While we still don’t know why exactly Aas decided to give Ibsen bug-eyes, this characterization does make some sense. Some of his most famous plays, like An Enemy of the People, essentially argue that the public can’t handle the truth, so uncomfortable feeling some experience from the figure’s piercing gaze may speak to that—like how the figure seems to stare into your very soul.

But the mystery of the figure is illustrative of the subject too. Over time, Ibsen’s public persona became increasingly harder to crack, and so did his plays, earning him a “sphinx” nickname as he was seen to provide more riddles than clear answers in his work. For a guy known for realism, one critic said this about Hedda Gabler, one of his later plays: “All in all, Hedda Gabler can hardly be described as anything other than a disagreeable figment of the imagination, a monster created by the poet himself in the form of a woman lacking any corresponding counterpart in the real world.”

Perhaps it’s fitting that my quest to learn more about this statue didn’t illuminate much about its subject. But if those googly eyes didn’t permit me a view inside, they still reflected something back to me that I didn’t know I needed. Not to overshare, but my mental health has not been great recently, and learning about this statue has brought me some very necessary joy—amplified by the generosity of people who helped me even though I don’t speak their language or even live on the same continent. I can only hope to pay it forward by sharing that joy with you in turn. At the very least, now you know why my phone wallpaper is a guy staring daggers into the distance.