Jenny Lind: The mystery of Nightingale’s figurehead

In 1990 I was a fed up schoolteacher and decided to open a little antique shop in Gothenburg,

Sweden. After a few years, I met Günter, a picker who drove around in a fire truck,

buying old furniture, windows and so forth. In May 1994 Günter asked, “Do you want to buy a

scarecrow?” He had visited a farmer the day before and seen a hand protruding from among the

rakes and shovels, leaning against the wall of a hayloft. According to the farmer, the appendage belonged

to a near life-size wooden figure used as a scarecrow about 100 years ago. At night however, in the moonlight,

it had scared people as well as crows, so it was relegated to the back of the loft and forgotten.

The only thing Günter could distinguish in the darkness was that the hand appeared well carved.

No one had ever tried to sell me a scarecrow before. After some anguish, I made an offer through

Günter to buy it. A few weeks later, he asked me to come to his farm and see my purchase.

Günter had a strange sense of humor. That evening, when I pushed open the heavy barn door,

I saw through flickering candlelight what presumably was the scarecrow. It was hidden

under a thin blanket. Mozart’s Requiem streamed from loudspeakers.

Hesitantly, I walked toward the figure to uncover the blanket. What was I going to see?

Click on the picture for video sequence

 

  

The experience was unreal. When the figure’s intense gaze met mine the world stood still as

questions whirled in my head. Who are you? Who made you? Where did you come from?

  RESEARCH

By Karl Eric Svärdskog

 THE REMARKABLE FIND