The carver, and the carved

Rolf learned the craft from his father, Bjarne — also a professional carver, who had himself apprenticed with Daniel Hagerup, a sculptor who studied in Oberammergau. Rolf went on to train at the Hjerleid school of woodcarving at Dovre, the old seat of the trade in Norway, earning both his journeyman’s and master’s certificates.

He does every step himself, from design and charcoal sketch to the carving and the final finish, at the bench in his carving workshop and forest property in Hornindal. For Rolf the aim is closer to enchantment than ornament — a relief that draws you in, a figure that seems about to step out of the wood.

But the red thread through it all is the passing on. Around fifteen hundred students have taken up the knife under his guidance over the years — widely across Norway and Scandinavia, and abroad in the United States, among them the Vesterheim museum in Decorah, Iowa, where the old country’s acanthus is kept alive an ocean away. He has helped shape the trade itself, leading the examination board and the curriculum a young carver is measured against.

Rolf works in every classic style — baroque, rococo, acanthus, dragestil; portraits, reliefs and sculpture. For him the classical is the foundation of the profession: it has to sit in the hands and the spine — and once it does, that foundation flows easily into whatever it is applied to.