The second Hall

The second hall is one of several architectural interior paintings Gerhard Munthe made that form part of his Åsmund narrative cycle, depicting the interconnected halls of the underground king's realm in the Old Norse folk tale. These architectural spaces — defined by their visual grandeur and their function as stages for supernatural encounter — required Munthe to develop a decorative vocabulary for the uncanny interior that drew on Norse art and mythology without resorting to naturalistic illusionism. The National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design holds the series as a key document of Norwegian national Romanticism.

Munthe treats the hall interior with the same flattened, decorative approach used throughout his Åsmund series, using bold colour fields and simplified architectural forms to evoke the mythological grandeur of the underground realm. Ornamental details draw on Norse decorative traditions.