Sculpture in the snow and a magnificent church

I missed getting the name of this Sveinsson sculpture but two friends have helped out. Siggi in Iceland and Sy in New York say this is called Tröllkonan or The Troll Woman

Washing the floor by Ásmundur Sveinsson

Siggi, one of our wonderful hosts in Iceland, surprised us when he suggested that we visit a couple of Reykjavik’s outdoor sculpture gardens. It was cold, grey, windy, icy and had been snowing, but what the heck. Let’s go!

I’m so glad we did.

The first garden introduced us to the work of Ásmundur Sveinsson, a pioneer of Icelandic sculpture. I was surprised to learn that his early work was fiercely opposed and criticised. That early work is large, chunky and captivating, especially covered in snow.

Depression

David and Goliath

Poor John and I wandered around the entire garden, and never minded the fact that we had to wade through ankle-deep snow. The garden wraps around Ásmundarsafn, the distinctive home and studio that Sveinsson designed with a Mediterranean theme.

As a young man, Sveinsson studied at the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm, mostly under the guidance of sculptor, Carl Milles. In the late 1920s, he lived in Paris for three years and travelled around Italy and Greece.

In Ásmundur Sveinsson’s annexe

Religions by Ásmundur Sveinsson

Sveinsson returned to Iceland in 1929 and began producing a series of abstracted figurative works. His themes were often men and women at work. During the 1940s, his work moved away from the human and animal forms that had been his mainstay, and he began producing work that was much lighter and almost entirely abstract.

Throughout his life, Sveinsson believed that art was relevant to the people and belonged to the masses. Not surprisingly, he has been called Iceland’s ‘folk poet’ of visual art, and many of his works are displayed in Reykjavík’s public places.

Sveinsson’s home and studio

Model

A small part of Sveinsson’s studio

Sveinsson died in 1982 (aged 89), and bequeathed all his work and his home/studio to the City of Reykjavík. Please scroll down to the comments. One of my faithful followers, efge63, has posted a short video about Sveinsson and his work and studio. 

After visiting Ásmundarsafn, we had a bonus stop at Reykjavík’s famous Lutheran church—Hallgrímskirkja—and one of the city’s most important landmarks.

A choir performs in front of the magnificent pipe organ in Reykjavik’s massive Lutheran church

The tower at Hallgrímskirkja is 74.5 metres

At 74.5 metres (244 ft) high, it is the largest church in Iceland and one of the tallest structures in the country. The church is named after the Icelandic poet and clergyman, Hallgrímur Pétursson (1614–74), author of the Passion Hymns.

Guðjón Samúelsson, who was inspired by the shapes created when lava cools into basalt rock, designed the church in 1937. Construction lasted from 1945 to 1986, with the tower completed long before the rest of the building.

Tower

Candelabra

Pulpit

Another impressive part of the church is its pipe organ, designed and constructed by the German organ builder, Johannes Klais of Bonn. The organ stands 15 metres tall and weighs 25 tons. I was interested to see that there was a organ appeal going. They want money to get the organ’s 5275 pipes cleaned. 

A choir was performing when we arrived, so we had a quick look before moving on to the Einar Jónsson Museum, another distinctive building that also served as the sculptor’s home and studio.

Christmas (Jol) by Einar Jónsson

The sun had set and the museum had closed by the time we arrived, but we were still able to admire a few of Jónsson’s pieces in the garden.

Jónsson was another sculpture pioneer in Iceland. In fact, he was many years ahead of Sveinsson. He lived abroad for more than 20 years before returning to his home country.

Unlike most other sculptors, Jónsson worked almost entirely in plaster. This had to do partly with the lack of good modeling clay in Iceland, but it allowed Jónsson to work on his individual sculptures for years. He sometimes spent more than a decade on a particular piece.

He had a hand in the design of his home, gallery and studio, which is where the museum is now located. His penthouse apartment there is considered to have one of the best views of Reykjavík.

Jónsson donated the premises and his work to the Einar Jónsson Museum in Reykjavík, which opened in 1923.

Wish we could have visited the penthouse at the Einar Jónsson Museum. See the Hallgrímskirkja church tower at the right

Having seen some of the various sculptures—just a small representation—do you have a favourite?

Note on naming
I was interested to read that the Icelandic names of Sveinsson and Jónsson are patronymic, meaning they are not family names. What I read said that both should be referred to by their ‘first names’ of Ásmundur and Einar.

Icelanders don’t always follow that. Both museums/gardens had plaques that used the ‘apparent’ surnames of Sveinsson and Jónsson, when mentioning either man for the second time. There’s an example below.

A bit of evidence