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Oslo (dpa) - Norwegian police announced Thursday they had recovered two masterpieces by artist Edvard Munch stolen two years from an Oslo museum.
Two armed men ripped the paintings - Madonna and a version of The Scream - off the museum walls and fled in a stolen car in the August 2004 heist.
"It felt like a real victory when the paintings were found," Iver Stensrud, who led the probe, said at a news conference.
Experts at the Munch Museum were later able to establish that the paintings were authentic, Norwegian news agency NTB reported.
Police said that no ransom was paid, and no new arrests had been made.
The paintings were not shown at the news conference in Oslo, and police said they would not disclose details about how they were recovered.
However, police said the paintings - rumoured to have been burned at one stage - were "in better condition" than they had hoped for, but art experts would have to study them in more detail.
Theories of the motive for the August 2004 robbery include that it was an attempt to divert police resources from a major investigation concerning a bank robbery in the coastal city of Stavanger in April 2004 when a policeman was killed.
Speculation resumed recently that the alleged ringleader of the bank robbery, David Toska, had offered to help retrieve the paintings in return for a reduced sentence.
In May, a Norwegian court sentenced three men to jail terms ranging from four to eight years for their role in the theft.
The Oslo district court also ruled that two of the men - alleged heist mastermind Bjorn Hoen and co-defendant Peter Tharaldsen - should pay damages of 750 million kroner (121 million dollars) to the city of Oslo for the stolen Munch masterpieces.
Three other defendants in the case were acquitted.
Munch, who lived from 1863 to 1944, is considered one of Europe's most important expressionist artists. He made several versions of the two recovered works.
Copyright 2006 dpa Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH
