Normandsdalen og de færøske figurer
Authors: Jessen Curt von 
Published: March 2024

The Norsemen's Valley in the garden of Fredensborg Castle in north-east Seeland is a big terraced circular bowl, laid out in the hills bordering the Esrom lake. In the center of the bottom is placed the column of victory, and on the two half parts of the concentric terraces were planted low cut trees. Between them were erected 57 Norwegian and 10 Faroese figures, mostly couples, representing farming people and fishermen from different parts of Norway and the Faroe Islands. 4 Icelandic figures were made but they have totally disappeared.

All the figures were in white painted sandstone (from Gotland) on small sandstone plinths (from Bornholm) with inscriptions in black. The whole complex was initiated about 1764 by King Frederic V (1746—1766) and completed by his widow queen about 1784. When she died in 1796 the castle was no longer used by the royal family and the maintenance of the gardenand its sculptures faded away. It was not until the middle of the 19th century restored to some extent.

Travellers visiting Fredensborg in the end of the 18th and at the beginning of the 19th centuries have given different judgements of the artistic value of the valley — from disgust to praise. The view of praise is strongly confirmed through the latest researches. The sculptor was Johan Gottfried Grund born in Meissen in 1733. As an apprentice of sculpture he worked in Dresden and Berlin and in 1757 he arrived in Copenhagen, where in 1762 he was appointed royal court sculptor. Fascinating about his sandstone sculptures, all about 5Va—6 feet in height, is that he got his models, at least for the Norwegian part, from small figurcs in walrus tusk, about 4 inches high, carved by a Norwegian postdriver, Jørgen Garnaas.

As models for the carvings the postdriver used some wooden dolls about 10 inches high each, which he himself has made and dressed in colourful peasant costumes. Some of the dolls and carvings do still exist in different collections in Norway and Denmark. Through these we are able to follow the work of the sculptor to a certain extent. It is thus pointed out by the Danish sculptor Eric Erlandsen that the sandstone figures are very close to their carved models and in several of them even the curving of the tusk is traceable.

But the legs, for instance, could not be cut free in the heavy stone and in full size figure, and therefore you find a fancyful collection of supports for the figure formed as rocks, trunks and different implements. The models for the ten Faroese figures are, however, not so easy to discern. For several reasons it is unlikely that they have been among the carvings of Garnaas.Nevertheless, the fígures show that Grund must have had an exact knowledge about the appearance, the cloth and implements of the Faroese people of that time.

It is therefore to be proposed that he got his information from one or another Faroese source in Copenhagen. One might have been the Faroese student I. Chr. Svabo, contemporary to the sculptor and eagerly interested in the daily life — and future life of his home country. As a task set by the Danish financial authorities in the eighties. I. Chr. Svabowrote his famous "Report from a Journey to the Faroe Islands 1781—1782", containing an extent survey on all parts of the Faroese daily life, supplied with numerous drawings in colour. This report was delivered in 1783 and a year and a half later Grund did finish his work in Fredensborg. In provincial Copenhagen it is evident that the student, the postdriver, and the sculptor at that time have been associated with the same persons in the same higher circles. The aging of the figuies has now been in progress for more than two centures.

Some reparations were made in the end of the 19th century but not until the 1950'ies a renewing of the two groups forming the entrance was necessary. The small trees have not been kept down in their original size, the higher they grew, the more shade they made in the valley and the more humid became the figures. Branches have fallen down and crushed projecting parts, and the iron clamps between the stone trunks have grown to a rusty foliage more than three times their original size, with new cracks for penetrating of water as one of the results.

In 1976 it became necessary to wash the whole complex, and this was done by the above mentioned sculptor Eric Erlandsen and his assistants. The report that followed is a thouroughly made inspection of each figure, in drawings and photographs showing the amount of destruction. More than one half of all the figures was in a very bad condition, and one third of them was almost ruined.

It ís proposed to mould the most destroyed ones and place the rest of the original ones in a lapidarium in an indoor atmosphere. It is also proposed to mould some of the best ones to get a picture of to-day of the best figures — to be related to the ones of the worst state of conservation.

As an experiment, Eric Erlandsen is finally proposing to mould — without retouche — and cast some of the best figures in a specially made concrete, and let the copy replace the original. A first example of this way of restoration has now been made of one of the last figures Grund made. The Faroese bride was moulded, cast and replaced in the valley in the early spring of 1980.