This course provides beginning as well as experienced carvers the opportunity to carve several figures in the Scandinavian flat-plane style. Beginning with an overview of tool sharpening and safety, the course offers hands-on carving experience as you complete each figure in step-by-step fashion. The figures will be painted, and an oil finish applied. Beginners will start with a simple project to gain confidence with using a carving knife, before advancing on to other projects of their choice. Experienced carvers may dig right into a variety of more complicated figures. Band-sawn wooden cutouts can be purchased directly from the instructor, who will also have a supply of basic carving knives and cut-resistant protective carving gloves for sale or for loan during the class. This five-day course offers enough time for students to work on carving as well as painting and finishing, and also provides ample time for sharing stories and history from a simpler time when an evening of whittling around the fire was the original Netflix.

The roots of figure carving in Scandinavia stretch back into the mists of time. It’s easy to imagine Northerners long ago, especially during long hours of winter darkness, gathered around the fire—their source of light as well as warmth—carving figures to entertain children or grandchildren. Or to imagine groups of men in the early- to mid-1800s, carving figures as they relaxed in the bunkhouses of their logging camps after a hard day’s work cutting trees to satisfy the demands of recently established commercial sawmills. Creating a Scandinavian horse, a rooster, a wood-chopper, or a grandmother, and using the simple tool of choice, an all-purpose whittling knife, they told stories in wood as well as in words—one chip at a time.