Harley Refsal: Transcript

Norwegian wood carver
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I really enjoy the use of hand tools rather than power tools. The whole business of working unplugged is a refreshing respite from the life that many of us lead when we’re all wired up and beepered up and perhaps connected in to the electric world in more ways than we’d like to be.

I’m Harley Refsal from Decorah in northeast Iowa. I’m a wood carver. I primarily do a folk style of carving, sometimes known as Scandinavian-style flat plane figure carving. The name coming from the fact that it’s a style of carving that originated in Scandinavia, and the flat plane part of that phrase stemming from the fact that, rather than using a whole arsenal of tools, it was typically, the figures were typically carved just with using a single knife—hence the large flat facets, sort of a minimalist style where more cuts said as much as possible.

My own ethnic background and the background of the community, both in which I grew up, Decorah, and in which I now live, is very heavily Norwegian. When it comes to Norwegian folk art, it’s very dominated by wood. Both building from wood, things made from wood, and the decorating and the painting of wood. Someone has said that you can describe Norwegian folk art in three words: wood, wood, wood. That obviously is a bit of an oversimplification.

Within the world of Norwegian wood carving, it probably can be said that there are two main types. There’s the acanthus style of carving. Acanthus carving is a carving of the acanthus leaf, a floral type of carving. This is a relief carving that’s done where you stand at a workbench and use a whole arsenal of tools. And then, on the other hand, there is the three-dimensional figure carving, which is a more free, kind of make-up-your-own rules as you go along style of carving that emerged not out of a guild tradition, but out of a folk art tradition where people did their creating with just a single knife. Perhaps, roughing the thing out even with a hatchet or a small hand axe. And then, having at it from that point on with just a simple knife that they wore at their belt.

I carve all my figures out of basswood. I begin by sawing a rough profile with a ban saw or an electric saw of some kind. Traditionally, they probably would have roughed out that shape with a hatchet. But nowadays, I saw my rough shapes, my basic form, with a saw. And then from that point on, I begin and create the rest of the figure using just a knife.

I think for those of us who carve today, rather than people a hundred years ago, who carved things out of necessity because they needed a spoon, or they needed to carve a figure as a toy or plaything for a child, for example. Today the issue is not one where we need to make things. Rather it’s that we’re so inundated with disposable stuff that I think that our needs today are more needs of slowing down and focusing on something. The joy of creating and the kind of mental and emotional and physical therapy that comes with creating something with our own hands.

When I sit at home and carve in the evening, I feel a sort of connectedness, not only with my own ethnic past. I can easily imagine that this was an activity in which my own ancestors were involved. But I feel a sort of connectedness with a lot of people throughout the country and throughout Scandinavia that I know are doing the very same thing, even though I can’t see them in person.