Composers' final resting places can often provide valuable insights into their historical reception and the context in which their music was originally created. Grieg's grave is a case in point. It consists of a simple stone tablet with a heavy lintel, set into the dark granite of a cliff below his villa, Troldhaugen (‘Troll Hill’), looking out over the waters of Nordåsvatnet towards the outer skerries and the open sea. Designed by Grieg's cousin, architect Schak Bull (nephew of the internationally renowned Bergen-born violin virtuoso Ole Bull), Grieg's name is carved in stylised runic letters across the face of the stone, evoking the Golden Age of Norway's Viking past. In some senses, the grave is an ‘anti-memorial’, an object that, initially at least, appears to resist its conventional cultural function. By comparison with the popular image of Grieg outside Norway, an idealisation of the composer surrounded by picturesque fjordland scenery promulgated most notoriously perhaps by the Broadway musical Song of Norway, the grave seems strikingly abstract and non-representational. There is no image or statue of the composer, and no attempt to soften the stark geometric lines of Bull's design. The contrast with the familiar vernacular style of the villa above, and Grieg's little composing hut set quaintly beside the water, could not be greater. In other ways, however, the grave literally sets in stone a particular strand of Grieg reception, namely his music's perceived association with the Norwegian landscape. Bull's design grounds Grieg's creativity in the Norwegian soil.