Works

Ingólfur Arnarson | 1907

While in Rome during the years 1902-1903 Jónsson made a small statue of Iceland’s first settler Ingolfur Arnarson. The statue shows a man in full armor standing next to a dragon figurehead holding a halberd. Some time after Jónsson returned to Copenhagen he continued his work on a statue of Ingólfur Arnarson and he exhibited it at the De Frie Billedhuggere exhibition in the spring of 1906. A delegation from the Icelandic congress visited Denmark in the fall of 1906 and it was suggested that the Danes would present the Icelandic nation with a bronze cast of the statue of Jason by Bertel Thorvaldsen. Before this idea was realized it was suggested in Danish newspapers that a statue of the settler Ingolfur Arnarson would be more appropriate, especially since Jónsson had already exhibited his statue of Arnarson earlier that year. The idea was well received in Iceland, and so a fundraiser was established and the Workers Union of Iceland donated 2000 kr. for the work. Einar Jónsson was commissioned and he began immediately. The fundraising did not go as well as planned and because of a difference of ideas between Jónsson and the Workers Union, the statue was not raised until 1924 even though it had been completed in 1907.

Ingolfur

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