“High Culture at Street Level”

Traditional monuments and commemorative structures used to be tall and domineering. Since the middle of the twentieth century, the verticality of monuments has diminished, and their design has become more abstract or purely linguistic. We examine the three-dimensional semiotics of Ibsen Sitat, a street-level monument in Norway commemorating Henrik Ibsen and his writing. The monument consists of quotations from Ibsen’s plays embedded in the pavement of Oslo’s city centre. We suggest that, as a national symbol, the monument’s placement at street level espouses an egalitarian or democratic nationalist ethos, which is in contrast to, for example, the aloof and domineering Norwegian flags flying atop the grand, state(ly) buildings surrounding Ibsen Sitat.