On the south bank of Norway’s Sognefjord there is a curious object dating back to 1913: a colossal bronze statue of twelve meters high of the Viking hero Fridtjov the Bold, mounted on top of a granite pedestal that is another twelve meters high. The statue was a gift to the Norwegian people from the German Kaiser Wilhelm II (1859-1941), whose historical reputation is mainly determined by the Allied accusation of having unleashed World War One. The Kaiser presented the statue as a thank you for the hospitality he received on around twenty-five summer holidays which he spent in Norway.
The Kaiser, who designed and paid for the statue himself, here showed his less well-known artistic side. Evidence of this can however be found throughout Europe, as the Fridtjov was not Wilhelm’s only statue. In fact, the Kaiser had a habit of symbolically gifting large sculptures, created by a fixed group of Berlin sculptors. For example, he gave a series of thirty-two marble...
Show moreOn the south bank of Norway’s Sognefjord there is a curious object dating back to 1913: a colossal bronze statue of twelve meters high of the Viking hero Fridtjov the Bold, mounted on top of a granite pedestal that is another twelve meters high. The statue was a gift to the Norwegian people from the German Kaiser Wilhelm II (1859-1941), whose historical reputation is mainly determined by the Allied accusation of having unleashed World War One. The Kaiser presented the statue as a thank you for the hospitality he received on around twenty-five summer holidays which he spent in Norway.
The Kaiser, who designed and paid for the statue himself, here showed his less well-known artistic side. Evidence of this can however be found throughout Europe, as the Fridtjov was not Wilhelm’s only statue. In fact, the Kaiser had a habit of symbolically gifting large sculptures, created by a fixed group of Berlin sculptors. For example, he gave a series of thirty-two marble statues of his own predecessors to the citizens of Berlin, a marble Goethe to the city of Rome, and he attempted to present five bronze Orange Princes to Queen Wilhelmina – who refused. However, the colossal highlight of the Kaiser's gifts was the aforementioned Fridtjov, hero of an Icelandic legend. It is located at the site where the legend is said to have taken place.
My research focuses primarily on how these colossal projects came about, based on archival research in Berlin, and the relationship between the Kaiser, as commissioner, and the sculptor ,Max Unger. Using anthropological and nationalism theories, I examine how the Fridtjov and the other statues were received, positively or negatively, by their beneficiaries. Finally, I examine, through pedagogical, psychoanalytic, political, and gender perspectives, what might have been the Kaiser's possible conscious or subconscious motives for this enormous statue, forgotten but permanent on its perch in central Norway.
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