Handcart statue to be placed in Norway museum

For generations, it has been an LDS icon, one of the most famous

artworks of Mormonism. Now, a copy of Torleif S. Knaphus' \"Handcart

Pioneers\" sculpture, viewed by millions of Temple Square visitors over

the years, will grace the Norwegian Emigrant Museum in Ottestad,

Norway, about a two-hour drive north of Oslo.

Knaphus (1881-1965) was a Norwegian convert to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who

emigrated to Salt Lake City in 1905, where he created many sculptures

and paintings, some with LDS themes. Many of the sculptures were

commissioned by the church. Besides the handcart statue, perhaps his

most famous work is the Hill Cumorah Monument in Palmyra, N.Y.,

depicting the angel Moroni.

\"It is a natural fit to have a statue about emigrants by a Norwegian

emigrant be placed at the Norwegian Emigrant Museum,\" said Allen P.

Gerritsen, a Knaphus grandson and representative of the Knaphus

(pronounced kuh-NOP-hoos) Family Organization.

The sculpture being sent to Norway is a casting from the 3-feet-high

original commissioned in 1924 by the Daughters of Utah Handcart

Pioneers. That work was displayed for decades in the old Bureau of

Information Building on Temple Square in Salt Lake City, where the

South Visitors Center now stands.

For the 1947 centennial of the coming of the Mormon pioneers to

Utah, the church commissioned a heroic-size copy of the sculpture for

placement on Temple Square, where it has stood for years just east of

the Assembly Hall.

Gerritsen said the sculpture going to Norway will be