A project of the Grieg Society of Scotland to conserve and interpret the ancestral gravestone of Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg at Rathen Old Kirkyard, Aberdeenshire, Scotland
The gravestone of composer Edvard Grieg’s great great grandparents John Greig and Anne Milne, which lies in Rathen kirkyard, near Fraserburgh, has been deteriorating fast in recent years and is now in a poor state of preservation. The stone has sunk so far into the ground, that its outline is now obscured by grass and its lettering almost illegible. Work urgently needs to be done to conserve it from further deterioration, and to give a new generation of visitors to the site a means to interpret this key physical symbol, both of Edvard Grieg’s connection with Scotland, and of Scottish-Norwegian cultural friendship and exchange.
In its original state, the gravestone made an elegant monument – gracefully understated, crisply inscribed and raised on beautifully carved stone supports. But today, searched out here by the Grieg Society of Scotland, it looks sad, forlorn and almost forgotten.
The gravestone was erected in the 1770s by the children of John and Anne to commemorate, first, their father who tenanted the nearby farm of Mosstoun of Cairnbulg, and later, in the 1780s, their widowed mother. Continue reading “Monumentally Grieg!”