The 2012 Norsk Høstfest festival in North Dakota, USA, has been presented with a special piece contributed by a pair of Icelandic sculptors.
Iceland native Jón Steinólfsson and Icelandic American Tryggvi Larum, who lives in California, have just completed a special wooden sculpture for this year’s Scandinavian pride festival.
The event is held each year in the tiny city of Minot, North Dakota, an area of the US where much of the population boasts Scandinavian heritage.
Steinólfsson and Larum said they worked on the piece for a long time before it was presented to the festivities on Friday 29 September. It is now on display in Minot’s Helsinki Hall.
Mr. Steinólfsson told the Minot Daily News, “We are really grateful for this opportunity to be invited here. It’s our donation to these people who have helped us. The best we can do is to make something for them.”
Mr. Larum said that upon being invited to the 35th annual Hstfest, he immediately sought the assistance of an artist straight from Iceland: “I said if you have to have me, then you will have to have another Icelandic sculptor, and this year was the very first time that a native Icelandic artist has ever exhibited here.”
Steinólfsson added, “What I notice so much here is how friendly people are. I have never seen it before and I have been around the world. This just melted my heart.”