Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Plaster Saints
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downfall, if man’s cruelty to man could fill me with the
bitterness I have experienced for their sakes.
Think of it! There was St. Olaf, with a crown
on his helmet, an axe in his hand, and a fallen
giant beneath his feet; on the pulpit Judith stood
in a red skirt and blue tunic, with a sword in one
hand and an hour-glass in the other instead of
the head of the Assyrian conqueror. There was a
mysterious Queen of Sheba in a blue skirt and
red tunic, with one web-foot and her hands full of
sibylline books; there was a grey St. Göran, lying
alone on a bench in the choir, for the horse and
the dragon had long since been broken; there was
St. Christopher with the flowering staff, and St.
Erik with sceptre and mitre, wrapped to his feet in
a flowing, yellow mantle.
I have sat in Svartsjö church and grieved that
the figures were gone and longed for them. I should
not have cared so much if a nose or a foot had been
missing, if the gilding had faded, and the colors
had scaled away. I should have seen them through
the glamour of the old legends. It seems to have
been the case with those saints that they were always
losing their sceptres or ears or hands and had to be
mended and repaired. The congregation tired of it at
last, and would gladly have been quit of them, but the
peasantry would never have taken any steps toward
their demolishment if Count Dohna had not done
it. It was he that ordered them to be taken away.
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