December 18th. The story behind the archangel

Text and images Britt Arnhild Wigum Lindland

It didn't take very long yesterday till people started to email me about the story of the archangel on top of the northwestern tower of Nidaros Cathedral. First I got a message on facebook from Sjur, the churchwarden of the cathedral "This angel, with the face of Bob Dylan (Knocking on Heavens Door) was modelled by the artist as a tribute to Dylans participation against the war in Vietnam"

Then I got an email from Carol (her text is about the sculptures on the western wall of the cathedral, and then some interesting information about "my" archangel:

I couldn't resist doing a search for your angels name. I came up with a paragraph on a random blog with a link to wikipedia. The paragraph is below along with the link. Do you think it could be true?

 

Carol

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The two lower rows of sculpture, proposed by Professor Oluf Kolsrud in 1928, are based on the engraving by Jacob Maschius. Kolsrud was an historical adviser on the church's restoration, and prepared an iconography for the sculptures. His proposal to place statues on the "royal floor" – although without evidence of historical precedent – was approved in 1935. It was assumed that the medieval sculptures were based on living models, and to a large extent, this concept is applied to the new sculptures. Thus the sculpture of Bishop Sigurd borrowed features from the poet Aasmund Olavsson Vinje, and Kristofer Leirdal's statue of the Archangel Michael on the top of the northwest tower was based, according to the sculptor, on the face of Bob Dylan – inspired by Dylan's opposition to the Vietnam War.^[3]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nidaros_Cathedral_West_Front

Every Friday at 2pm we have a cup of coffee at work. Yesterday I told about my angel revelation while having coffee with my colleagues, and then most of them could tell me back that of course they knew this story, about Bob Dylan and the Vietnam War. And I was told more........Some years ago, when Dylan was in Trondheim for a concert, those responsible for the concert wanted to give Dylan a photo of the archangels face. A lot of effort was being made to make this and a beautiful, huge framed photo was handed Dylan when the concert was over.

You say you want to know what happened to the photo? Well, that's quite another story, and not mine to tell.......