THE 
American-Scandinavian 
Review 
Volume X 
August, 1922 
Number 8 
Two American Sculptors 
Fjelde—Father and Son 
By Luth Jaeger 
The Fjeldes hail from Aalesund, a small town on the west coast 
of Norway, where the head of the family plied his trade of carpenter 
and wood-carver until he emigrated to America in 1872. His son 
Jacob, after several years of study in Copenhagen and Rome, had 
won a reputation as a sculptor of much promise in his native land 
before he followed his father, in 1887, to the New World and made 
Minneapolis his home until his premature death in 1896. 
Minneapolis in the late eighties could not yet boast of being the 
largest city in Minnesota; but she felt a pardonable pride in having 
had the Exposition of 1887. It was industrial and commercial, but 
the outstanding feature which gave it tone and character and which 
has lingered in the memory through all these years was its large and 
valuable art collection, and the Scandinavian Art Exhibition in par¬ 
ticular, composed mainly of paintings by some of the greatest artists 
of the three Scandinavian countries. 
These facts had not a little to do with Jacob Fjelde’s settling in 
Minneapolis; but the city was young and in a measure undeveloped, 
and it is hardly necessary to say that a sculptor could not expect in¬ 
stantaneous recognition in the form of financial returns. Small of 
stature and mild featured, with a somewhat quizzical expression, re¬ 
served, taciturn, a dreamer rather than a man of action, Jacob Fjelde 
had not the qualities necessary to make an immediate impression upon 
a community as yet lacking in artistic appreciation. But he wore 
well, to use the homely phrase, he was studious and conscientious, went 
about his business in an unobtrusive but effective way, and succeeded 
in establishing his reputation as an artist of enduring worth, if not a 
genius. 
