The official memorials at the sites where 69 people were massacred by right-wing extremist Anders Behring Breivik in Norway three years ago are to be created by Swedish artist Jonas Dahlberg next year.

He was recently selected from a short list which included British artist Jeremy Deller.

Central to the Dahlberg project is the extraordinary Memory Wound, a 3.5 metre wide fissure in the tip of the Sorbraten peninsula that overlooks the island of Utoya where the massacre took place.

His concept "proposes a wound within nature itself," the artist has said. "It reflects the abrupt and permanent loss of those who died. This void in the landscape makes it impossible to reach the end of the headland."

A short walk through a pine forest will lead visitors to a viewing chamber inset at the very face of the Wound, with the last 20 metres leading through a gently slopping tunnel.

The separation of the tip of the peninsula by the excavated "laceration of nature" creates a stunning and emotionally charged environment that induces a mournful reflection on life and its irrevocable loss.

The names of the tragic victims will be carved into the face of the wall on the opposite side of the Wound - visually near but too far to touch. The island of Utoya remains visible from the viewing platform.

Dahlberg achieves a momentous feat. The breadth of the symbiosis of form and meaning is truly remarkable and utterly modern in its visual language, with its impact all the more powerful for its formal discretion.

The natural material excavated from the Wound will be transferred - "a poetic gesture," according to Dahlberg - to become the foundation upon which temporary and permanent memorials will be assembled in central Oslo.

This natural material will include 1,000 cubic metres of stone, trees and plant life gathered from the fissure and from the creation of a pathway through the forest.

When unveiled in July next year the Memory Wound will almost certainly become the single most significant realisation of public art in Europe so far this century.