Art: A Sculpture for the Lapps

Life among the Swedish Lapps who roam the tundras above the Arctic Circle was a dolorous affair a century ago. As a result, the Lapps drowned their sorrows in barrels of aquavit. Then into the Laplanders’ midst came Lars Levi Laestadius, famed botanist and Lutheran minister, with a message of hellfire and brimstone of such urgency that it sobered up Laplanders by the hundreds, set off a revivalist movement that is still a major force for morality and sobriety.

Last week in one of Preacher Laestadius’ old strongholds, the community of Jukkasjarvi far above the Arctic Circle, Laplanders gathered to celebrate the 350th anniversary of their 17th century wooden church. The main event was the unveiling of a new altarpiece, commissioned six years ago by the local mining company and carved by 64-year-old Bror Hjorth (pronounced yoort), Sweden’s foremost and most controversial sculptor.

Born the son of an Uppland (eastern Sweden) forester, Bror Hjorth early decided to become an artist, had barely begun when he developed tuberculosis, spent six months in a sanatorium, followed by four years of convalescence. “Those were the most valuable years,” says Hjorth. “I began thinking and experiencing nature.” Finally cured. Hjorth switched to sculpture, went to Paris to study with Rodin’s famed pupil. Antoine Bourdelle dabbled in cubism, finally found his artistic forefather in Paul Gauguin.

Primitive, provincial and expressionist by choice, Hjorth distorts form to achieve more powerful effects, offends many a conservative Swede. His mural for Stockholm’s Caroline Hospital showing a coarse peasant Christ surrounded by nude suppliants so shocked the hospital authorities it was consigned to the basement, and only later rescued by the city’s Museum of Modern Art.

But from the Laplanders of the north, Sculptor Hjorth won admiration. As the central teakwood altarpiece for Jukkasjarvi Church, Hjorth carved a looming Christ with heavy Gauguin overtones, surrounded by the Far North’s flowers. On the left stands Laestadius preaching hellfire, while one Lapp smashes a keg of aquavit, another returns a stolen reindeer. On the right, Laestadius begs mercy from a Virgin Mary, while a Lapp lay priest, Raatma the Mild, listens. Dagens Nyheter, Sweden’s largest daily, called it “a masterpiece . . . everything is dissolved and recreated in the same breath.”