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	On a mist shrouded bluff overlooking California's North Coast, Tryggvi sculpts images inspired from the art and archaeology of Northern Europe's Bronze and Iron Age.

About the Artist
Tryggvi Larum was born in 1956 in Hafnarfjordur, Iceland to a Norwegian-American father and Icelandic mother and at three years of age he immigrated to California.  Soon after entering the California school system he began to display an exceptional talent for art, primarily in drawing prompting his instructors in the final faze of his education to encourage him to pursue a career as an art teacher.

In 1975 following in his father’s footsteps he served as an American soldier in Northern Italy and then in the 1980's he returned to Iceland to retrace his ancestry while serving aboard Icelandic fishing trawlers.

He returned to California where he currently resides with his wife and daughter.  He worked in multiple professions while continuing to occasionally practice his drawing until 1998 when he discovered and began to explore wood sculpture as a means to find a new artistic voice to relate the spirit of his talent, culture, ancestral reverence and life experience.  Although still an emerging artist his chosen art style draws from his 20 year personal study of the fragmentary history, art and archeology of Northern European Bronze and Iron Ages.

His work began to draw public and media attention from the start of the completion of his first sculpture.  Over the years his reinterpretation of these art styles and their mythology and evolving imaginative mix of traditional and sometimes contemporary styles has lead to numerous awards including the public installation of his work in art centers in the U.S., Canada and Iceland.  His most recent acknowledgment came in the form of a 2007 nomination of a cultural folk art fellowship to the N.E.A. from Northern California’s Morris Graves Museum of Art and full sponsorship from the Alliance for California Traditional Arts for his 2007 exhibit of his work at the Nordic Heritage Museum of Seattle.

Artist's Statement
The purpose of my work is to give new life and authentic expression to the tradition of Icelandic and Nordic art.  As an Icelandic immigrant to this country, I want to bridge the ancient perspective of my ancestors and the magnificent materials available here in my adopted land.  The purpose of my art is, then to be a voice of artistic expression celebrating a cultural heritage passed down through generations as part of my ethnic community’s collective experience.  I want this voice and the products of my hands to echo the haunting imagery of my people’s long artistic tradition.  I want to contribute this to the stream of diverse cultures which flow through this country.  The body of my work represents my ongoing determination to seek other venues to reach a broader, more diverse audience of local, national and international communities.  I want to share the marvelous discovery of the inherent, rich beauty of the woods unique to California, so vital an element in the natural identity of the American West.  By presenting the product of my art to a wider audience, I would hope to spread widely my fascination and respect for ancient Nordic art forms and the deeper meanings they seek to express.  I would like to be able to teach, to mentor and to support workshops devoted to an understanding of Nordic art forms and the techniques of a carver in stone and wood.  I would hope that such exposure would force me to clarify the understanding of my own art and enable me to share that clarity with others.  Through that interaction, I would hope to develop a higher level of professional artistic expression.

My chosen medium represents a mixed media of wood, paint and stone whose origins reach back through time to man’s first attempts to communicate through imagery and symbols, to define and interpret nature, myth and mankind.  Of all the media available to us today, I believe that wood is the most expressive and sensitive.  Yet it is the least understood and perhaps the most neglected.  Shaping wood is a deeply spiritual exercise because it is a living material.  Each piece possesses an inherent, entirely singular beauty, the history of its growth and life.  The carver must develop a feeling for the reality and personality of each piece of wood.  Its carving into shapes is a process of mutual cooperation between the carver and the grain, texture and colors of an individual piece of wood.  It is a harmony, a union, of grain and carver.  Particularly with wood, the sculptor must work with the inherent memory of grain that forms the character of each piece.  This truth lies also with the carving of stone where the color, granularity and strength of the stone must find a sculptor within whom those qualities resonate and are understood in the sculptor’s fingertips as in the sculptor’s mind.  The relationship between the sculpted object is nothing less than a delicate dance.