In a zany new competition, your wildest howl could get you a free trip to the home of Edvard Munch, Norwegian painter of the famous masterpiece, The Scream.
I scream, you scream, we all scream for – a free trip to Norway?
In a zany new competition, your wildest howl could get you a free trip to the home of Edvard Munch, Norwegian painter of the famous masterpiece, The Scream, which shows a figure howling in agony against a dramatic backdrop of swirling waters and a fiery orange sky.
Inspired by the 150th anniversary of Munch’s birth, who was born in Adalsbruk, Norway, on 12 December 1863, tourism authority Visit Norway has launched a Scream Your Way to Norway campaign. Entrants are encouraged to submit video clips of their version of The Scream – their best ear-splitting or blood-curdling shriek – for a chance to win a free trip to the country or one of a bevy of Scandinavian goods, including a Setesdal sweater or Svalbard anorak.
Visit Norway will then edit the submissions into the world’s longest scream film to commemorate Munch’s birthday. As of publication time, the video is 20 minutes long and includes a range of hilarious and agonizing screams, including a screaming goat and a climber standing atop a jagged pinnacle, howling in triumph. The final film will be screened when the competition closes on 28 February.
Here’s how it works: entrants can scream, shoot and submit as many videos as they please. “Short and sweet, screaming for a couple of seconds is fine,” Visit Norway advised. “We are looking for creativity.”
Production quality is up to entrants; there’s even an option to upload a video straight from your laptop’s webcam. The contest operates on a sliding scale, so the more entries submitted, the bigger the award gets. If there are 250 entries, there will be two trips awarded; if there are 3,000 entries, five trips will be awarded. A “scream of the day” is also awarded, with prizes including Raggen wool socks. Check out the contest promo video and a selection of submissions on Visit Norway’s YouTube page (we recommend having some earplugs or a bottle of painkiller nearby).
Screaming for a trip to Munch’s homeland is, of course, a fitting way to commemorate the artist’s 150th year, but it’s not the only way. The Munch Museum and the National Gallery of Norway, both in Oslo, are organising retrospectives of Munch’s work, available for viewing from June to October. Munch enthusiasts can also visit New York’s Museum of Modern Art to view an 1895 pastel-on-cardboard version of The Scream, which sold at auction last year for $120 million and is on loan at the museum through the end of April. Munch painted four versions of his famous painting between 1893 and 1910, and there are two of the originals on view at the Munch Museum, one at the National Gallery of Norway and one at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.