Oslo’s vast National Museum opens with tapestry of 400 reindeer skulls

The grey box' has been eight years and 500m in the making and the striking installation in the foyer is a statement of intent

It started as a pile of rotting reindeer heads dumped outside a court. The Norwegian government had ordered a mass cull of herds owned by Norway's indigenous Sami people, and Maret Anne Sara wanted judges hearing a case against the demand, brought by her herder brother, to experience the grisly consequences.

But after a formal opening ceremony presided over by Norway's Queen Sonja on Friday, Sara's decapitated heads will make up the first art installation seen by visitors on Saturday as they pass through the doors of what is a new palace of the Nordic art establishment in Oslo - a vast museum of art, architecture and design, known as the National Museum.