The Steilneset Memorial consists of two buildings designed as a collaboration between Swiss architect Peter Zumthor and the late French-American artist Louise Bourgeois. The first is a long, tent-like timber and canvas structure suspended from a timber rack — inside, 91 lighted windows line the walls, one for each person burned, each accompanied by a text describing who they were and what they were accused of. The effect is extraordinarily moving.
The second building, also by Zumthor but containing Bourgeois's final artwork, is a dark pavilion housing a burning chair suspended above a series of mirrors — a confrontation with fire, justice, and memory. Bourgeois died in 2010, the year before the memorial opened; it was her last major work. The two structures stand at the edge of the sea on the western tip of Vardøya, exposed to the wind. Allow at least an hour; this is not a place to rush through.