Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.1981, Blaðsíða 370

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Normandsdalen og de færøske figurer
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 figures 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. Svabo
wrote 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 figures 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