Stolen Munch Works Recovered

Three works by the Norwegian artist Edvard Munch, stolen from a hotel in southern Norway, were recovered yesterday less than 24 hours after they were taken.

Two were lithographs (one of the Swedish playwright August Strindberg, the other of Munch himself), and the third a watercolour of a woman in a blue dress, estimated together to be worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Iver Stensrud, of the Oslo police, declined to say what condition the works were in when they were recovered. He said that several arrests had been made.

The works were taken from the dining room of the Refsnes Gods hotel-restaurant outside the city of Moss, 30 miles south of Oslo, on Sunday. The alarm system in the hotel was not turned on at the time.

The police said the thieves were disturbed by a hotel worker leaving for home as they ripped the works from the wall with crowbars.

"One of the men dropped the piece he was yanking out," an officer said.

"It fell on the floor, smashing the glass. He then grabbed what was inside, and they left with all three works."

The police are still investigating the theft of a version of Munch's masterpiece The Scream, and another famous work, The Madonna, from an Oslo museum in August.

An art-theft expert, Alexandra Smith, said that the thefts that took place on Sunday sounded like the work of opportunistic amateurs.