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"Norwegian Police Find Three Stolen Munch Pictures"

OSLO (Reuters) - Police recovered three pictures by Norwegian artist Edvard Munch in a raid on Monday a day after they were stolen from a hotel but his iconic work "The Scream" taken in a separate theft last year was still missing.

"Several people have been arrested ... some are Norwegian and others have a foreign background," Oslo assistant police chief Iver Stensrud told NRK television after a police raid in the Oslo area on Monday night.

He said police had recovered a 1915 Munch watercolor, "Blue Dress," and two lithographs -- a self-portrait and a portrait of Swedish playwright and novelist August Strindberg. It was unclear if they had been damaged, Stensrud said.

He said that it was impossible to say if the thieves were linked to those who stole "The Scream," showing a terrified waif-like figure under a blood-red sky, and "Madonna" from Oslo's Munch Museum in front of dozens of tourists last August.

But he reiterated police were confident of solving that theft too.

Hotel owner Widar Salbuvik said Sunday's robbers seemed amateurish. The stolen pictures were not even among the most valuable in the collection of 400 works ranging from Munch to Andy Warhol, he said.

Armed with a crowbar, two men broke into the country hotel south of Oslo and tore the three works off the walls and ran off after a worker in the Refsnes Gods hotel surprised them.

"Blue Dress," depicting a blonde woman, had been hanging in the hotel restaurant, which had just shut.

Art experts said the works snatched on Sunday were minor compared to the 1893 "The Scream" and "Madonna."

NO NATIONAL CATASTROPHE

"This is not a national catastrophe," Knut Forsberg, managing director of Blomqvist art auctioneers in Oslo, said of Sunday's theft.

He estimated that "Blue Dress" was worth perhaps one million crowns ($160,800), the Munch self-portrait about 300,000 crowns and the portrait of Strindberg up to about 200,000 crowns. Munch made dozens of copies of lithographs but did not number them.

By contrast, other experts have estimated "The Scream" might fetch $75 million if it could be sold at auction and "Madonna," showing a raven-haired woman, might be worth $15 million.

"The Scream" has become a symbol of angst in a world scarred by horrors including the Holocaust, the atom bomb and terrorism.

Munch painted four versions of his most famous work -- another was stolen for several months in 1994 but recovered in a sting operation by police posing as U.S. buyers.

Theories about the disappearance of "The Scream" include that the theft was ordered by a shadowy foreign collector or that the robbers planned to demand a ransom for its return.

Others said a Norwegian crime gang might simply have wanted to show off its power with the daylight robbery in August, but with no clear plans of what to do with the paintings afterwards.

Stensrud said earlier that no ransom demand had been received for "The Scream" but declined to say if police had a main theory about the motive.

Munch lived from 1863 to 1944 and produced about 1,700 paintings during his lifetime and thousands of graphic works. ($1=6.219 Norwegian Crown)