3-047-003 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Monument to King Harold Haarfager, at Christiania, 1872. Engraving of a photograph by Mr. Szacinski, of Christiania. One of two '...monuments lately erected in Norway to commemorate the early history of that nation...[One is] the colossal statue of King Harold Haarfager, placed close to the Storthing or Parliament House, in Carl Johan's Gade, the principal street of Christiania. It is supposed that the Norwegian people, who belonged to the same Gothic race with the Swedes and Danes, bearing a close affinity to the German or Teuton stock, had been divided into many small tribes, continually at war with each other, before the reign of this Harold, in the ninth century of the Christian era...The statue and the obelisk, which have just been erected with a view simply to gratify the national self-esteem, may therefore be regarded with a more general interest, for the sake of their indirect reference to great events in the history of Europe'. From "Illustrated London News", 1872.