The Scream taken from the National Gallery, Oslo

On the morning of Saturday 12 February 1994, an alarm rang at the National Gallery in Oslo at 6.37. Aftenposten Historie reports that the guard took it for another false alarm and reset the system without checking the monitors. It was the opening day of the Winter Olympics at Lillehammer, and much of the Oslo police force was on Olympic duty. Two men had set a ladder against the wall, broken a second-floor window, cut the wire that held the painting and carried The Scream out. ABC reports that the job took less than a minute. They left a postcard that read “Thanks for the poor security.”

The painting is Edvard Munch’s 1893 version, in oil, tempera and pastel on cardboard, 91 by 73.5 centimetres. A security camera filmed the thieves, but the pictures were blurred. The gallery’s director, Knut Berg, said the picture was Norway’s most valuable and could not be sold. On 3 March a ransom demand reached the government. It refused. History.com and The Independent give different sums, so none is given here.

Norwegian police then asked Scotland Yard for help. Two Metropolitan Police officers, Charles Hill and Sidney Walker, posed as agents of the J. Paul Getty Museum. John Butler, head of the Yard’s art squad, planned the operation with Leif Lier, an Oslo police inspector. On 7 May 1994 the painting was handed over at a summer house at Aasgaardstrand. The Guardian reported it as almost undamaged. It went back to the gallery.

Four men were tried. On 17 January 1996 the Oslo district court convicted four, The New York Times reports. Pål Enger, the main figure in the case, received six years and three months. Dagbladet and NRK report that William Ellingsen, whom police named as the man who climbed the ladder, was convicted too. NRK says that on appeal in 1997 four of seven judges found his part proven, but a conviction needed five, so he was acquitted. On 23 August 1997 the Court of Appeal convicted Enger again, in connection with the theft, and cut his sentence to six years. Of the other three, the two versions of the NTB wire report disagree. One says one man was acquitted and two had sentences cut. The other says two were acquitted and one was cut.

Bjørn Grytdal was tried for receiving stolen goods. His lawyer says he got nearly five years in the district court. In 1998 the Supreme Court acquitted him. It held that the police had provoked the offence and had not documented or controlled the sting well enough. It had no objection to the British officers. In September 1998 he claimed 1,250,000 kroner for wrongful prosecution. The outcome of that claim was not found. The verdict on a fourth man, Jan Olsen, was also not found. Dagbladet reports that a defence lawyer won a Supreme Court ruling that the British officers could testify anonymously, so their evidence was never heard in a Norwegian court. Some English-language reports say all the men went free. The Norwegian reports show that Enger stayed convicted.

Enger denied the theft for years. Dagbladet reports that he admitted it in 2008. The Associated Press reports that he died on 29 June 2024, aged 57. Thieves took another version of The Scream from the Munch Museum in 2004, and another story covers that case. This 1893 painting hangs today in the National Museum in Oslo, which opened in 2022.