Åsmund and his Brothers on the Sea

Åsmund and his Brothers on the Sea is one of the narrative scenes in Gerhard Munthe's Åsmund folk tale cycle that departs from the underground hall settings to show the heroes in open water — a subject that gave Munthe scope to develop his decorative language in a different register. The sea voyage in Norse narrative tradition carried enormous cultural weight, and Munthe's treatment draws on both the literary traditions of Norse saga and the visual conventions of Norwegian maritime painting. The National Museum holds this as part of the complete Åsmund narrative cycle.

The maritime composition employs Munthe's stylised visual language to render the sea as a pattern of simplified wave-forms, drawing on the decorative traditions he studied in Norse art. Figures in the vessel are silhouetted against the sea and sky in a bold, graphic arrangement.