In this iconoclastic age, when statues are being toppled by people who have little understanding of history, it is interesting that this sculpture, which problematically features several swastikas, is still standing atop the Carlsberg building in Copenhagen.
It is by the prominent Danish sculptor Carl Johan Bonnesen (1868-1933), and shows the Nordic thunder god Thor in his mythic battle against the Jötunns, a race of misshapen giants or ogres. The swastikas, of course, have no connection with Naziism as the sculpture was completed in 1901, when the symbol still represented the Sun and its power, as it still does in Oriental Hinduism and Buddhism.
It is by the prominent Danish sculptor Carl Johan Bonnesen (1868-1933), and shows the Nordic thunder god Thor in his mythic battle against the Jötunns, a race of misshapen giants or ogres. The swastikas, of course, have no connection with Naziism as the sculpture was completed in 1901, when the symbol still represented the Sun and its power, as it still does in Oriental Hinduism and Buddhism.
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| The Carlsberg Building |
Bonnesen also created a work on the same theme in 1926, "Thor’s Battle with the Giants." This is located on the Island of Thorø (Thor’s island) and was commissioned by Harald Plum, a Danish industrialist who had acquired the island in 1917.
The name of the island reflects the fact that the island was once sacred to Thor and allegedly a site of human sacrifice prior to the conversion of the Danes to Christianity.
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| Thor’s Battle with the Giants" on the Island of Thorø |
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