Tímarit Þjóðræknisfélags Íslendinga - 01.01.1963, Page 123

albert thorvaldsen, sculptor
105
After arriving in Charlottenborg,
Thorvaldsen was feted and hailed
in every conceivable manner. There
Were grand receptions, addresses of
tribute and hundreds of messages
írom far and wide. One of these,
coming from the United States of
America, was a message from Thom-
as H. Webb, secretary of the Rhode
Island Historical Society, informing
him that he had been elected Hon-
orary Fellow of the Society on ac-
c°unt of being the only living de-
scendant of the first European born
in North America! The letter said
ihat through the researches of The
Hoyal Norse Archaeological Society,
contained in the book, “American
Antiquities”, now reposing in the
library of Harvard University, there
^as found a genealogical table trac-
in§ the ancestry of Thorvaldsen to
one Thorfinnur Karlsefni who had
dwelt one winter at Mount Hope,
Rhode Island, in the year 1006-7,
with his wife Guðíður, and his whole
household. There Guðríður bore a
son named Snorri, and from him,
ln direct line, is descended the sculp-
tor, Bertel Thorvaldsen, and as such
ls a sort of deputy or representative
°í Snorri, the first white child born
°n American soil.
Thorvaldsen was delighted with
this lettter, in spite of its small in-
accuracies, and said this was the
ipst time he had been honored be-
cause of his ancestry! In fact he is
•Icscended, eighth in line, from the
notable man of rank, letters and art,
Guðbrandur, Bispuk of Hólar Bish-
°Pric in Iceland.
Thorvaldsen had dwelt in Rome
or forty-two years, and had come
to the evening of his days, and a
placid and beautiful evening it was!
He made his home for the last five
years of his life on the delightful
estate of Count Stampe and his wife
at Nysö. His health was good, his
mental faculties unimpaired, and he
still worked at his beloved sculp-
ture. He made a short trip to Rome
in 1841, to arrange for the sending
to Copenhagen the last of his collec-
tion. He had watched the building
of the Thorvaldsen Museum, which
was now almost completed on the
outside. “Now I am ready to go to
another Eternal City, for Bindesböll
has prepared the resting place for
my earthly body”, he said shortly
before his death.
That evening he attended a per-
formance at the Royal Opera House,
in good spirits and contented with
his lot. He greeted numerous friends
as he was on his way to his box
seat, and sat down ready to enjoy
the performance. As the orchestra
played the overture and before the
curtain went up, a friend saw him
bend down as if to pick something
off the floor; just as he was about
to sink down on the floor, those near
rushed to his aid, and carried him
silently to the foyer. The heart had
stopped beating; he had already
passed away. This was on Sunday,
March 24th, 1844. He would have
been seventy-four years old had he
lived until the fall, as he was born
in 1770, reputedly on a Danish mer-
chant vessel just out from Skagaf-
jörður.
The funeral was impressive and
solemn, and he was laid temporarily
to rest in the burial vault of the