I will be gone for the majority of the next week, so there won't be a new post next Monday. I'm not sure yet if there will be on the 2nd, or if it will have to wait until the 9th. But at any rate, I hope you have a wonderful whatever holiday you celebrate at this time of year, and have a very happy new year!
Monday, December 19, 2016
Article Round-Up
I was hoping to have a full post this week but work's just been too much and I don't want to do anything when I get home. If you're interested though, you can see a few of the things I've created for my job here, then clicking on Civil Liberties or Women in Ohio and finding Frances Dana Gage, Women in Ohio for Annette Cronise Lutes, and African Americans for the Gist Settlements. These are all educational resources I helped create and are vaguely like what I do here. It's a really good resource for a quick overview on any number of topics. (As of this writing I see that Frances Dana Gage's name is spelled wrong and I'll be letting them know right now!)
Monday, December 5, 2016
Repeal Day and Books
Happy repeal day!
Something a bit different today, though I know there are three Mondays left in the year (wow, that went fast...). If you use Goodreads, you might know about the reading challenges they run each year. At the beginning of the year you pick a number of books you'd like to read that year (I picked 50 this year; it's been more or less in past years) and then just keep track of the date you finished them for them to be counted for the year. This year I hit my goal by the end of November, so anything I finish this month is gravy.
Goodreads, or probably any book-ish website like it, is great for keeping track of what you're reading in so many ways. You can create your own shelves in addition to the three they start you with. You can cross-reference those shelves to see your stats for a year. For example, I have shelves for books read by year (so I have handy how many I read in addition to the reading challenge), as well as for author- if it's written by a man or a woman. So doing that I can see that out of the 50 books I've finished so far this year, 29 were by men and 21 by women (I'll have to try and read more women next year; a few series this year really cranked up the male numbers!). I can also see that I read 15 books I classified as non-fiction; I also have three non-fiction in my currently reading shelf as well. Basically this has all been a really long-winded way to tell you about some (I won't get into all 15) of the non-fiction books I read this year.
Going from most recent to oldest...
A is for Arsenic by Kathryn Harkup. This was really interesting! This is subtitled "The Poisons of Agatha Christie" and it's really excellent. I love Agatha Christie's books and tv adaptations. I've been interested in crime and poison for years, and I think that's why I like mystery books so much. This was the perfect blend. There are fourteen chapters, each titled like "A is for Arsenic". The chapter then tells a bit about a story where Christie used the poison, as well as about true crime cases that may have inspired or been inspired by Christie (mostly the former). Harkup goes into the science behind how each poison kills as well and how well Christie did portraying that. As you might remember from my post on Christie, she was a trained pharmacist and knew her poisons, so it's no surprise that she portrays them accurately in her novels.
The Greater Journey by David McCullough. I really enjoyed this. I started it once before and abandoned it, but used the audiobook this time and had no issue. (Seriously, I can't recommend audiobooks highly enough. I don't always have one going - sometimes there are podcasts I'd rather listen to - but I usually do and they really help with books I've struggled with before.) This is about Americans in Paris in the 19th century. McCullough discusses artists, writers, politicians, inventors, you name it really. I learned that Samuel Morse started out as a painter before he worked on telegraph and invented Morse Code. There were parts about John Singer Sargent too, which well supplemented Strapless by Deborah Davis which I read in 2015. I really liked the parts about Augustus Saint-Gaudens and James Fenimore Cooper too.
The Clockwork Universe by Edward Dolnick. This one I'll mention because I didn't really care for it and I think it's important to discuss those sorts of books as well. This sounded really good - subtitled "Isaac Newton, the Royal Society, and the Birth of the Modern World" - but it didn't live up to expectations, so you may enjoy it. I felt like this was too much of a pop-science book and didn't really discuss anything in depth. It was written almost conversationally and made reference to The DaVinci Code and posters you hang on your wall, which just lost me a bit. This is another one I listened to the audiobook for, and it's totally possible that some of my issue was the narrator and not always the book. (The The DaVinci Code reference is still in the book though, so...)
Romantic Outlaws by Charlotte Gordon. This was wonderful. A dual biography of Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley, Gordon interwove their lives and stories really well. Chapters would alternate from mother to daughter, highlighting some of the parallels in their lives. I'd read a little about Shelley before - The Monsters by Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler - but nothing about Wollstonecraft. It was fascinating.
How to be a Victorian by Ruth Goodman. This one took me a while to get through, but I really enjoyed it over all. Goodman takes you through a day of a Victorian. The chapters go from waking up to bathing to breakfast to work to play or school for children and so on. The chapters on clothing and other relatively superficial things were probably my favorites, while I slowed down with the chapters on work and school and games. Overall it was really interesting and could be a really good resource if you're writing about the era. Goodman also has other books on Victorian life as well as How to be a Tudor and how to live in other eras.
The Bronte Cabinet by Deborah Lutz. I loved everything about this book. It's set up to act like a sort of curio cabinet of the Brontes lives, hence the title, and so each chapter is about one of those items and how it relates to them. I didn't know a lot about the Brontes going into this, and I've only read Jane Eyre, but I just find them really interesting and this book was a great beginning biography. Lutz uses items like the miniature books the children created, walking sticks, a dog's collar, and writing desks, to really illuminate the lives of Emily, Charlotte, and Anne, as well as bits of Branwell and their father.
In addition to the books I've finished this year, I'm technically currently reading six books (oops!), three of which are non-fiction: The Witches: Salem, 1692 by Stacy Schiff; Fracture: Life and Culture in the West, 1918-1938 by Philipp Blom; and When Books Went to War: The Stories That Helped Us Win World War II by Molly Guptill Manning. Of these, I'm only actively reading the last, and it's really interesting. It's about the Armed Services Editions that were published during WWII to help with soldiers' morale, and also pulled some books out of obscurity; did you know The Great Gatsby had fallen from popularity before it was chosen as an ASE? (The others... I might be a little Salem-d out lately, and with Fracture, once I passed the years I'm interested in, my reading really dropped off...)
I will try and have a real post before the end of the year, but I hope you enjoyed this about books I've read this year!
Monday, November 28, 2016
Article Round-Up
Sorry for the silence for the last few weeks. The election took a lot out of me and I did nothing for a little while but go to work. I've been in a funk since then, knitting less, reading a bit more, still watching too much TV. But we've passed Thanksgiving and are nearly into December, so I figured it's a good time to get back to this, and ease into it with an article round-up.
Monday, November 7, 2016
Article Round-Up
Happy almost Election Day! I can't wait for this joke to be over... If I can find something in my closet, I plan on wearing some white tomorrow (#wearwhitetovote), if not I'll wear green and purple. I cast my vote early a couple weeks ago and have just been sitting back waiting for election day since then.
I have a lot of links for you today. I tried to find interesting stuff about Presidents and candidates and voting, but then I also have non-political links that are just neat.
I have a lot of links for you today. I tried to find interesting stuff about Presidents and candidates and voting, but then I also have non-political links that are just neat.
Today we have Hillary, but in the 1870s we had Victoria Woodhull.
(I really recommend The Scarlet Sisters about Victoria and her sister.)
(I really recommend The Scarlet Sisters about Victoria and her sister.)
Now, go vote tomorrow!
Monday, October 31, 2016
Happy Halloween!
Monday, October 24, 2016
Article Round-Up
Halloween is next week and I'm still trying to think of something appropriately Halloween-y to talk about without just doing witches or something like that. We'll see what I come up with... In the mean time, here's some things I've found interesting recently, including information about Halloween in the Gilded Age. Another link discusses Augustus Saint-Gaudens, who I recently read some about in David McCullough's The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris, which I'd really recommend.
Monday, October 17, 2016
Cléo de Mérode
Well, I’m getting away from Icelandic topics now. I may get back to some, we’ll see, but I keep finding subjects that interest me and I want to learn more about and share with someone, so we’re moving on. I follow a lot of historical pages or just interesting pages on facebook, and a lot of times there are brief articles about things that sound interesting, so I save them to remember for later, possibly for a post of my own. Today’s topic was found in that way. I don’t remember exactly where I saw something about Cléo de Mérode (maybe 5-minute History?), but she sounded interesting and has a unique look, so here we are.
Cléo de Mérode, called Lulu by her parents, was born Cléopatra Diane de Mérode on September 27, 1875, probably in Paris, but maybe in Biarritz or Bordeaux. Her father, Carl (or Karl), was an Austrian landscape painter, and “styled himself Freiherr von Merode (Baron Merode) and claimed descent from the old and noble Belgian family of de Merode” and “Her mother was a former Viennese actress” (1).
When Cléo was eight, she was sent away to study dance. She made her professional debut at age eleven, and by age sixteen she was famous - but not necessarily for her dance. Cléo became famous for her hairstyle. In the late 1880s and early 1890s, women wore their hair piled on top of their heads, maybe with the front portion parted, maybe with bangs, but all up mostly away from their face. Cléo wore her hair low in back, and parted right down the middle, hair covering her ears (this led to a rumor at one point that she didn’t even have ears). This different hairstyle made her famous and was adopted by admirers.
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| 1880s hairstyle |
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| 1890s hairstyle |
Cléo had her image on postcards, playing cards, you name it. She was featured in “Behind the Scenes at the Opera” at the Musée Grévin, even though she was only a member of the coryphee! (2) (I had to look up what the coryphee is, as I don’t know dance. A member of the coryphee is “a member of a ballet company who dances usually as part of a small group and who ranks below the soloists” [3].)
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| Cléo, by Vazquez, and the sculpture, La Danseuse |
Alexandre Falguière used Cléo’s likeness in his sculpture La Danseuse (The Dancer) (now at the Musée d’Orsay). He claimed, or at least there were rumors, that the sculpture was modeled from her body, but “facing a public scandal, she claim[ed] she only lent her features to the sculpture’s face” (4). In addition to this sculpture, Cléo had her portrait done by Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, Charles Puyo, Alfredo Muller, and Giovanni Boldini. She was photographed by Felix Nadar and other “illustrious photographers of the day” (5).
In 1896, King Léopold II of Belgium went to the ballet in Paris and saw Cléo perform. He became completely enchanted with her, leading to gossip that she was his mistress. The king already had two children with a rumored prostitute, so this association with the king damaged Cléo’s reputation. Despite this, or maybe because of it in a way, Cléo was still able to become an international star.
In 1897 Cléo travelled to the United States, appearing for a month at Koster and Blat’s in New York. Her appearance was heavily anticipated, but her performance was disappointing. “The press was unkind in reviewing her performances, praising her beauty but saying that she could not dance or act” (6). Despite the letdown, Cléo still made over forty times her regular monthly Parisian salary.
Cléo continued her tour, continuing to various countries around the globe. She danced for King Chulalenghorn of Siam, doing a Siamese style dance with Parisian highlights. She became popular in Austria and Germany, so much so that a character in the German movie Frauen der Leidenschaft was based on her. In Vienna, Austria, she caught the attention of Gustav Klimt (this relationship is fictionalized for the 2006 movie, Klimt). Back in Paris, Cléo took a risk and performed at the Folies Bergère, earning her a whole new following. In 1902, she went to England for the first time, performing various national dances at the Alhambra. In 1904 she toured Sweden, Norway, and Denmark.
Cléo kept dancing until her early fifties. She retired to Biarritz, where she gave dance lessons until she was in her eighties. Through this time, as she was growing older, she sculpted small figurines of her own, and sold them. In 1955, she published her autobiography, Le Ballet de ma vie (The Dance of my Life).
Also in 1955, Cléo took Simone de Beauvoir to court and won. Cléo sued her for “wrongly describing Cleo in public as a prostitute who had taken an aristocratic-sounding stage name as self-promotion. Cleo’s defence was that she was a professional dancer and member of the old, noble, and distinguished de Merode family” (7). While Cléo did win, she only won one franc in damages because “the judge found that Cleo had permitted the rumors during the course of her career for their publicity value” (8). The judge did also order that Cléo’s name would be struck from all future editions of de Beauvoir’s The Third Sex.
Cléo never married and never had any children. There were rumors of her engagement to various famous and/or rich men throughout her life, but none were true. She did have two romances in her life, but both ended tragically; one when her lover died from typhoid, and the other left her for another woman.
Cléo de Mérode died in 1966. She is buried in Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris, with her mother. (She lived with her mother until 1899, when her mother died.) There is a likeness of Cléo in mourning over the joint tomb.
1, 2, 6, 8 - Cleo de Merode (1875-1966)
3 - coryphée
5 - Cléo de Mérode
Monday, October 10, 2016
"Columbus Day - How is That Still a Thing?"
Today is Columbus Day and so I thought it might be a good idea to share some articles and a video about today and the issues people have with it.
I will try and have a real post next week for you. I may have underestimated how exhausting working full-time would be... lol
Monday, October 3, 2016
Article Round-Up
I'm not quite sure what happened last week. I think I saved my post (here and elsewhere) rather than scheduling/publishing them, but at any rate there wasn't a post last week! :( Here's the post that should have been, plus a few new links since I had to edit it anyhow.
Monday, September 19, 2016
Aud the Deep-Minded
Today I
start a new job – by the time you’re reading this I’ll be half way through my
day! The new job is regular hours, so it
shouldn’t affect my ability to do this blog too much. I won’t be able to do research at work
anymore, but that’s about it, and with regular hours I’ll be able to budget my
time to keep this up regularly. I’m
really excited to start this new job and I think that will help create
excitement throughout the rest of my activities. J
Today’s
subject is another in our Icelandic mini-series (possibly the last entry, I’m
not sure yet). We have a woman this
week, but there isn’t a whole lot of real information about her, so this will
be relatively short. Also, not really
any images… I found one picture related,
but that’s it. She is mentioned in a
number of Sagas though, so you can always read about her more in those.
Auður
djúpúðga Ketilsdóttir, also known as Aud the Deep Minded, Unn, Aud Ketilsdatter, or Unnur
Ketilsdottir, was a ninth century settler of Iceland. Her marks are still visible in Iceland, which
will be mentioned later. Other than
ninth century, we’re not exactly sure when she lived. The only concrete date I found was that she
settled in Iceland around 892 (1); we don’t know exactly how old she was then,
but she had adult grandchildren by then, so she had to be fairly old. Before this, though, she had quite a life.
Aud was the
second daughter of Ketill Flatnose, a Norwegian Viking military commander. Ketill fled “Norway for Scotland to escape
the tyranny of King Harald Fairhair” (2).
Aud married Olaf (or Oleif) the White, a son of King Ingjald, the
self-proclaimed King of Dublin. Aud and
Olaf were the parents of Thorstein the Red.
Olaf was likely killed in battle; at any rate, Aud and Thorstein went to
the Hebrides. Thorstein conquered most
of Northern Scotland and became a Viking chieftain. Other chieftains plotted against Thorstein,
though, and betrayed him and killed him in battle.
When Aud
heard about Thorstein’s death, she secretly commissioned a Knarr to be built –
a ship generally used for Atlantic crossings.
When the ship was completed, Aud sailed to Orkney and then on to
Iceland. She commanded twenty to thirty
men on the ship, and was “respected, capable, independent and strong-willed”
(3). In addition to Aud and the men, the
ship also helps prisoners. When they
arrived in Iceland, Aud freed these men; these freed-men had a status between
slave and free-born and had limited rights and abilities. Aud gave these men land to farm, though.
Aud mostly
claimed areas in Western Iceland for her and those with her, especially around
Búðardalur. Many places in this area still have the names that relate to
Aud. Breiðafjörður, Breakfast Headland,
is where Aud stopped to eat breakfast.
Kambsnes, Comb Headland, is where she once lost a comb. Krosshólaborg is a large, prominent hill
where Aud erected crosses, and where a modern cross is today. (4) Krosshólaborg is important in Aud’s
story. Aud was a baptized Christian and
is credited with bringing Christianity to Iceland.
Aud was one
of the first great Viking matriarchs.
When all her male relatives died, she didn’t let this stop her; she did
what she wanted to do and was successful at it.
Because of her wise actions she got the moniker “Deep minded”. Her descendants gave us her stories through
the sagas, making her an important and relevant woman. Aud is featured in the Landnámabók, Njáls
Saga, Laxdæla Saga, Eyrbyggja Saga, Eiríks Saga Rauða, and Grettis Saga.
Monday, September 12, 2016
Article Round-Up
Happy belated Labor Day (hence no post last week). Here's what I've read and found interesting this week:
This is a bit of old news, but you can watch a bunch of Paramount movies on YouTube.
(Hopefully this turns out okay... I've been having issues with the formatting on this one for some reason...)
Monday, August 29, 2016
Halldór Laxness
This week I don’t have cool
pictures I took myself regarding this week’s subject, the author Halldór
Laxness. We tried really, really hard
though, and it’s kind of a funny story.
My mom looked up where Laxness is buried on Find A Grave, a pretty good
site for that sort of thing. Find A
Grave says he’s in Fossvogskirkjugarður, in Reykjavik. Getting there was in and of itself an
adventure and a pain, but we finally made it.
We had the picture from Find A Grave to go on and we were all set. It fairly quickly became apparent that this
was not where Laxness is buried. Fossvogskirkjugarður
is very woodsy and, while over a sort of bay, there’s no way that you can see
mountains and a river and all that, like in the picture from the website. Fossvogskirkjugarður is very pretty and has
some really neat stuff, but it’s not what we were looking for, so we called it
a night.
After googling and finding the
Wikimedia Commons link, we find out that he’s actually buried in the cemetery
at Mossfellskirkja in Mossfellsdalur – near Reykjavik, but not workable in the
time we had left in the area. So, no
actual pictures from me of anything Laxness-related. This one is from Find A Grave (so you can see
what we were looking for!). I was told, though,
that a building we walked by down the main street in Reykjavik is where he was
born, but my cousin wasn’t quite sure of the exact building, so no photo of
that either. On to the actual, brief
history of Halldór Laxness.
Halldór Kiljan Laxness was born
Halldór Guðjónsson on April 23, 1902 in Reykjavik, Iceland. His family lived in Reykjavik until 1905,
when they moved out of town to Mosfellsbær.
I didn’t find a whole lot on young Halldór, but it is known that he was
writing from a young age. In the winter
of 1915-1916, Laxness went to the technical school in Reykjavik, and in 1916 he
published his first piece, an article, in the newspaper Morgunblaðið. A few years later, in 1919, Laxness published
his first novel, Barn náttúrunnar: ástarsaga (Child of Nature: A
Romance). Around this same time,
Laxness began travelling through Europe.
This was a crucial point in Laxness’s
life in that this is when he went from Halldór Guðjónsson to Halldór Kiljan
Laxness. In 1922, Laxness joined the
Abbaye Saint-Maurice-et-Saint-Maur in Luxembourg, and in 1923 he was baptized and
confirmed in the Catholic Church as Halldór Kiljan Laxness. Laxness was taken from the farm he grew up
on, and Kiljan was for the Irish martyr, Saint Killian. At the Abbaye Laxness practiced self-study,
studying French, Latin, theology, and philosophy. He also joined a group that was praying for
the Nordic countries to convert back to Catholicism.
This religious period didn’t last
long though; from 1927 to 1929, Laxness was living in America and “he became
attracted to socialism” (1). Influenced
by this and Upton Sinclair, whom he also befriended, Laxness wrote 1929’s Alþýðubókin
(The Book of the People). At this
same time Laxness decided to give his go at writing screenplays and moved to
Hollywood for a time; he was a big fan of Chaplin’s film City Lights. In 1929,
Laxness faced deportation, probably in part due to his socialism, and “Sinclair
and Stephen Crane’s daughter, Helen, intervened” (2). In the 1940s, Laxness would translate some of
Sinclair’s and Ernest Hemingway’s works into Icelandic.
Despite, or maybe because of, this,
Laxness moved back to Iceland in 1930 where he “‘became the apostle of the
younger generation’” (3). Laxness was
quite prolific in this period, writing the first two parts of Salka Volka,
and Fótatak manna (Steps of Man), as well as short story
collections and essays. In 1934, Sjálfstætt
fólk (Independent People) was published. If you’ve heard of Laxness and his work, it’s
probably this book, partly because in 1946 Independent People was chosen
as a Book of the Month Club selection and sold over 450,000 in the United
States. Because of his socialism and
some regard for the Soviet Union, Laxness was investigated by J. Edgar Hoover,
and Hoover wanted to keep the royalties Laxness earned out of “red Icelandic
hands” (4).
In 1948, Laxness had a house built
outside of Mosfellsbær and began a family with his second wife, who also worked
as his secretary and manager. At this
time the US was developing a permanent military base in Keflavik (about an hour
from Reykjavik). They had had a base
there during the Second World War and wanted to extend it. Laxness wrote a satirical piece, Atómstöðin
(The Atom Station), about this, and it’s probable that this added to the
US’s dislike of him.
In the 1950s, accolades began to
flow in for Laxness. In 1953, he was
awarded the World Peace Council Literary Prize, a Soviet-sponsored prize. In 1955, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in
Literature “‘for his vivid epic power which has renewed the great narrative art
of Iceland’” (5). He is Iceland’s first
and only Nobel laureate.
In the 1960s Laxness was active
writing and producing plays in Iceland.
In 1969 he won the Sonning Prize, a prize “awarded biennially for
outstanding contributions to European culture” (6). Throughout the 1970s and 1980s he continued
to write essays. As he grew older,
though, he developed Alzheimer’s and moved into a nursing home, where he died
at age 95.
Laxness’s home and garden,
Gljúfrasteinn, is now a museum run by the Icelandic government. One of his daughters is an Oscar-nominated
director. A biography of him “won the
Icelandic literary prize for best work of non-fiction in 2004” (7). Laxness’s legacy lives on in Iceland.
1, 3, 5 - Halldór Laxness
6 - Sonning Prize
Monday, August 22, 2016
Something new: Article round-up.
We're going to try something different going forward for a while. Rather than trying to scramble and research and put together a post every week, I'm going to switch to every other week for new posts. But! I'm still going to have a new post every week, but the in-between weeks will be a sort of article round up of things I've read or found interesting this past week.
Annie Edson Taylor and Niagara Falls. (Bonus: Taylor makes an appearance in Murdoch Mysteries, season 7, episode 1, "Murdoch Ahoy".)
Until next week!
Tuesday, August 16, 2016
Einar Jónsson
First off,
apologies this wasn’t up yesterday.
There was an issue at work and I was called in early, before I had time
to schedule this to post yesterday. So
here it is a day late, but no worse for wear. ;)
So if you
remember back two weeks to the pictures from the south of Iceland, you might
remember a picture from out in the sculpture garden at the Einar Jónsson Museum
in Reykjavik. I fell in love with those
sculptures the first time I was in Iceland, and being able to go back in go in
the museum and see more was just wonderful.
I figured who better to learn a bit more about than Einar. I didn’t find a whole lot of varying
information on Einar, so this might be a bit brief, but I’ll try and make up
for that with pictures.
Einar
Jónsson was born on May 11, 1874 at Galtafell, the family farm in southern Iceland. There isn’t much known about Einar’s
childhood other than that he had “an artistic bent” (1). We know he went to Reykjavik for the first
time when he was fifteen, and first saw parliament and the paintings there. When he was seventeen, he moved to Reykjavik
and began to learn English and drawing (2).
At this
time there wasn’t a heritage of sculpting in Iceland. In 1893 Einar left Iceland for Copenhagen,
Denmark, where he first learned wood carving.
He then began learning true sculpting, and took night classes. (3) And from 1896 to 1899 Einar studied at the
Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen. Einar studied under the Danish sculptors
Vilhelm Bissen and Theobald Stein. Beginning
in 1902, Einar studied in Rome on a grant from the Althing (Icelandic
Parliament).
This time
in Rome seems to have shifted something in how Einar worked. While living in Rome he was able to visit throughout
Germany, Austria, and Italy. When he
left Rome, Einar “completely rejected naturalistic depiction and publicly
criticized the classical art tradition, which he felt had weighed artists down”
(4). Einar became focused on the need
for artists to figure out their own style and path, following what they wanted
to do rather than trying to follow what others had done.
Personally, Einar turned to German symbolism, also using personification and
allegory in his pieces. He also became
interested in the teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg and theosophy, working this
into his art as well. While he was
concerned about these abstract themes, he also wanted his art to be accessible and
so always used concrete imagery that the public would understand and interpret
themselves. (5)
In 1909,
Einar made a deal with the Althing. They
would build him a home, studio, and museum (all in one), and he would donate
all of his works to Iceland. It took
some time, but in 1914, the Althing accepted this proposal. Parliament pitched in for one-third of the
cost and a national collection was taken up to provide for the other
two-thirds. (6) For his
workspace/museum, Einar chose the highest point in Reykjavik and built the
building to his own plans, though officially it was designed with Einar
Erlendsson.
Throughout
this whole time he was away from Iceland, he was still creating Icelandic works
either on his own or through commissions.
In this period he created “The Outlaw” (1900), “Jónas Hallgrímsson” (1907),
and “Jón Sigurðsson” (1911); the statues of Jónas Hallgrímsson and Jón
Sigurðsson are both displayed in Reykjavik.
He also took commissions for statues of Ingólfur Arnarson (in Reykjavik)
and Þorfinnur Karlsefni (in Philadelphia; a second in Reykjavik).
(A note on all these people: Jónas
Hallgrímsson was a poet and author; Jón Sigurðsson was a saga expert and
politician who led Iceland’s independence movement; Ingólfur Arnarson, with his
wife, was the first permanent settler in Iceland and founded Reykjavik; Þorfi.nnur
Karlsefni was an explorer whose son, Snorri, was the first European child born
in North America.)
At this
time, in 1917, Einar married Anne Marie Jørgensen (Anna Jörgensen). Together they travelled to the United States
so Einar could continue work on the statue of Þorfinnur Karlsefni. This statue was the first part of a bequest
to “create a series of sculptures ‘emblematic of the history of America’”
(7). In 1920, Einar and Anne moved back
to Iceland, and the following year his second major North American work was
commissioned: a statue of Jón Sigurðsson for the Manitoba Legislative Building
in Winnipeg.
Finally, in
1923, on Midsummer’s Day, the Einar Jónsson art museum opened. This was the first art museum in
Iceland. The museum was on the main
floor, Einar’s apartment was on the upper floor, and his studio was on the
lower floor. These positions shifted
slightly over the years as Einar and Anne grew older and couldn’t move
throughout the building as easily, including a building out back in what is now
the sculpture garden.
Einar and
Anne put work into the garden out back, and some of the bronze casts in the
sculpture garden were cast while he was alive.
Einar died October 18, 1954 at the age of 80; Anne died October 2,
1975. The sculpture garden didn’t open
until June 8, 1984.
Einar
Jónsson wasn’t like most sculptors. Most
sculptors work in clay, but due to the geologic makeup of Iceland, there wasn’t
the clay for him to use. Instead, Einar
used plaster to create his pieces. This
also allowed him to continue working on a piece for much longer than modelling
clay would allow (sometimes up to a decade) (8). Only towards the end of his life and after
his death were his works cast in bronze.
In addition
to the twenty-six pieces on display in the sculpture garden at the museum,
Einar created eight public monuments and did at least four private
commissions. In the museum you can see the
plasters Einar created for some of his well-known pieces, pieces in the garden,
and pieces that were never cast in bronze.
It’s a really wonderful museum and it was great being able to travel throughout
Iceland and see his pieces across the country.
1, 8 - Einar Jónsson
Monday, August 8, 2016
Iceland Part Two
Part two of my Iceland trip, the north. We spent about half our trip in the south and half in the north. We probably did a little less technically in the north because a decent part of it was spent at the amazing family reunion. We still saw quite a lot though, but some things had to be missed.
Goðafoss, where the pagan idols were thrown away during
Iceland's conversion to Christianity.
Dimmuborgir, this amazing lava formation park.
(For any Game of Thrones fans, the Wildling camp was shot here.)
Akureyrikirkja.
Puffins! We went to Grimsey, to the Arctic Circle and there
are puffins everywhere! I've seen puffins before,
but they're never not awesome.
Arctic Circle marker on Grimsey.
Laufás, where I worked for a few weeks in 2007.
It's a turf house that is run as a museum.
Looking down into the fjord that Akureyri sits on.
Icelandic horses at the family farm.
Munkaþverá. The reunion was for descendants of people buried
at this church - my great-great grandparents.
Grund, where other's of the family are buried.
The magnificent sunset (around 11pm) outside of where the reunion was held.
There's my trip in a very small nutshell. I could've shared so many other photos, but didn't want to 1) share too much of our trip and 2) get even further away from what this blog is supposed to be.
Next week I'll be back to having historical entries! Like I said before my trip, they'll probably be Iceland related for a bit. :)
Monday, August 1, 2016
Iceland Part One
I meant to have a post last week, but with getting back from Iceland and getting back into work, it didn't happen. But! I'll have two posts with my photos, and then we'll get back to regularly scheduled, historical blog posts. Anything else will (hopefully) be supplementary, not taking the place of posts like it's become much much too often.
Here's from the first part of the trip, Reykjavik and various other places in the south. Part 2 will be in the north.
Here's from the first part of the trip, Reykjavik and various other places in the south. Part 2 will be in the north.
The famous Viking boat sculpture in the Reykjavik harbor.
Statue of Jón Sigurðsson, across from the Alþing.
Hallgrimskirkja from the back/side. The main church in Reykjavik.
In the sculpture garden at the Einar Jónsson Museum, with Hallgrimskirkja in the background.
This museum was wonderful. I went to the sculpture garden last time, but didn't go in;
this time we went in and it was really worth it.
Waterfall in Þingvellir, where the first parliament was held and where the
North American and European plates are separating.
Þingvellirvatn.
Strokkur. This is at the same location as Geysir, the first geyser,
but Geysir doesn't go off anymore and Strokkur does regularly.
Gullfoss.
A random waterfall we found on the way to Snæfellsnes.
Icelandic horses. I don't know if you can tell from this photo, but Icelandic
horses are shorter than other horses. They're a special breed that is kept isolated.
They also have their own gait that no other horse breed has.
A random beach on Snæfellsnes.
Snæfellsjökull (glacier).
Just some cool rocks and fog on the way north.
I tried to pick a variety of pictures that show how varied Iceland can look. It's such a gorgeous country. Next week - the north!
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