In the light of the sad and disputatious fate of Freya, a displaced walrus who had the misfortune to choose Norway as the last stop on her misbegotten tour of Europe (having gone from Northumberland to the Netherlands, where latterly she dozed on a moored navy submarine and raised speculation that she might be making an anti-nuclear protest), it is ironic that the most famous depiction of a walrus in western art, an exquisite drawing by Albrecht Dürer dated 1521 and now in the British Museum, was also slaughtered on a Norwegian shore. In Dürer’s case, the animal was decapitated and its head sent to Pope Leo X in Rome, who had a penchant for such curiosities. The tribute was intended to show the Medici papacy what wonders and riches the North had to offer.
Stranger yet, then, to note that a campaign began last week to raise a statue to Freya. Photographs of her already appear to take on a noble, if not regal aspect, in her unexpected surroundings.
