Twin City Bronze - Part 1

The Twin Cities are home to a remarkable number of bronze statues and as far as I can tell, not a single general-on-a-horse. Many honor artists, writers or musicians - though there is a fair sampling of politicians - and many are tucked in out of the way locations. I have bumped into (not literally) a number of them on my bicycle tours.

Hiawatha and Minnehaha

Prior to my generation, memorizing poetry was a standard grade school requirement. My grandmother could recite poem after poem from memory and my mother won an award for reciting "The Village Smithy" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow before her 3rd grade class. Memorization is now pas·sé , as is memory itself, thanks to our friends at Google. However, there is one poem I did memorize in elementary school - "The Song of Hiawatha" - also by Longfellow. Well, to be honest, I memorized just the first stanza, the "By the shores of Gitchee Gumee / By the shining Big-Sea-Water / Stood the wigwam of Nokomis ...". Turns out there are some 22 chapters in this epic poem. It is written in trochaic tetrameter in case you wondered.

And as you may know, this is all "Minnesota Stuff". Gitchee Gumee is now known as Lake Superior. Nokomis was Hiawatha's grandmother and has a Minneapolis lake, park, street and library bearing her name. And then there is Hiawatha and his love, Minnehaha. Apparently, there was a real Hiawatha, one of the founders of the Iroquois Nation, but the one we are concerned with here is fictional, the subject of Longfellow's poem. Hiawatha not only has a lake, street, school etc. bearing his name, but also a light rail line and a golf course (soon to disappear) and a bank. Minnehaha has a street, a creek that runs from Minnetonka to the Mississippi and Minneapolis' best park named for her. And tucked back in the weeds just upstream from Minnehaha Falls is this:

Bronze of Hiawatha & Minnehaha

The statue of Hiawatha and Minnehaha was created by Jacob Fjelde, a Norwegian immigrant, so the pair look pretty Scandinavian. The statue was installed in 1912.

Ole Bull

Keeping on the Scandinavian theme, tucked away on the fringe of Loring Park at the edge of downtown Minneapolis, you will find a statue of Ole Bull, erected in 1897, also by Jacob Fjelde, and here the Norwegian likeness seems appropriate.

Ole Bull

Ole Bull was an internationally famous Norwegian virtuoso violinist, an acquaintance of Chopin and Paganini. In the 1840's he made an extensive concert tour in the USA. In his grade school years, my father was a member of Mrs. Lesley's Lowry Children's Orchestra - in the violin section. He claimed that he was destined to supplant Ole Bull in the annals of violin virtuosity, but his brother Don, sat on his violin thus ending a budding career. This was during the depression years so a replacement was not in the cards.

Norman Borlaug

The next obscure statue is of Norman Borlaug. I suspect the name is unfamiliar to you. Dr. Borlaug was an agronomist and humanitarian whose work to produce high-yield, disease resistant wheat is credited with saving a billion lives from starvation. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970.

Norman Borlaug

His statue is modestly placed in a green space on the University of Minnesota, St. Paul Campus. Here's to more praise for humanitarians.


Twin City statuary seems to be making a comeback. There are over 100 Peanuts character statues scattered around the Twin Cities. These are all fiber glass. Poor Charlie Brown. Another embarrassment. Maybe more on this another time.

And the Minnesota Twins are getting into the "swing" with bronzes of the famous circling Target Field.  I'll let you guess who these two are. Hint: not Sid Hartman.

To be continued.

Copyright © 2017 Dave Hoplin