Peter Henrikson on life after helping restore Notre Dame

When the iconic Notre Dame Cathedral suffered a devastating fire in 2019, the French government promised to rebuild the structure in a manner faithful to its last known visual state. Grand Marais-based timber frame designer and builder Peter Henrikson was one of the few Americans called to join the traditional rebuild effort in France.

Peter has been teaching timber framing coursework at North House Folk School since 1998, and he returned to the Folk School in February and March of 2024 to give a talk about his experience overseas called “Broad Axes, Plumbobs, and Comradery: Medieval Timber Frame Roof Reconstruction in France.”

Peter’s presentation was not able to be live streamed or shared on the internet due to a non-disclosure agreement, but WTIP’s Chuck Olsen caught up with Peter before his March 13th talk at the Folk School’s Blue Building to hear about some very special souvenirs he brought back from France, and to learn whether he’ll be returning to Paris to witness the fully restored cathedral.

The transcript and interview audio are below.

PETER HENRIKSON
I’m Peter Henriksen and I’m doing a presentation on my experience being in France for seven months working on the restoration of Notre Dame.

CHUCK OLSEN
What were some of the kind of the big highlights of what what you did there?

PETER HENRIKSON
Yeah, I guess there were different highlights. The work, especially the hewing part of it, but also, well, the whole experience. The work experience was pretty amazing to be a part of that project, and to work with a bunch of amazing French people working on the project.

So there were kind of two phases of the project that I worked on, the hewing of the timbers, and then actually the the layout and cutting joinery of the timbers. But the other huge part of the experience was just being in France, living in France, and my wife Amy could be there for six of the seven months, which was fantastic. So I got to experience living in France and traveling around France.

CHUCK OLSEN
Sounds like a dream.

PETER HENRIKSON
It was, it was pretty great.

CHUCK OLSEN
I think I heard you tell a story about selecting the trees?

PETER HENRIKSON
Yeah, I wasn’t part of most of the tree selection. On our own, the group of hewers did spend a few weekends out in the forest where we actually cut down trees by hand with axes and and old crosscut saws and and hewed them in the woods, and those timbers ended up being part of the Notre Dame Cathedral.

So that was a very small part of the project.

CHUCK OLSEN
Do you have plans to go back for a grand unveiling?

PETER HENRIKSON
Well, the grand opening will be in December, and I will not be going back for that. I think it’ll be a big, huge to-do, and really all the work I did is hidden up in the roof and wouldn’t be able to see it. But in the summer of 2025, one of the architects has said that he’s going to do a tour for all the people who worked on the timber frame up into the roof.

So after he has a chance to breathe for six months, take a bunch of the timber framers for a tour of the roof.

CHUCK OLSEN
Well, that sounds pretty special for you guys. You have a giant axe on the table here that I’m dying to have a look at. Tell me about this tool, and is this something that you brought with you?

PETER HENRIKSON
Yeah, there are two big axes on the table, sort of a rough hewing axe and then the fine finish hewing axe, and they are not axes I brought with me. They aren’t the axes I used when I was there, but they are made by the same blacksmiths as the ones I used when I was there. And actually I returned there in January for the ceremony of the part of the timber frame roof that I worked on was all up. They finally finished it in early January, so I went there for that. And when I was there, I arranged to pick up a couple of axes.

This is the rough hewing axe where you’re standing on top of the log, swinging it down below your feet actually, thus it has a super long handle. Very heavy for just knocking off the big chunks of wood off the side and getting close to the line, but not quite to the line. So that’s the first step of the axe work.

And then the final hewing axe is here. So these are designed just to make a really nice smooth finish, at least once you learn how to use it really well. And this is almost an exact copy of the one I used. I had the blacksmith make it a little bit lighter than the one I used, but other than that, it’s pretty much identical.

So it’s the same blacksmith. A group of blacksmiths made a bunch of axes for the restoration, and then they offered to make axes for the people who worked on it. So I decided to buy an axe, a couple of axes.

CHUCK OLSEN
What projects are you looking forward to next, or what are you working on now that you’re enjoying?

PETER HENRIKSON
Well, I came back and jumped right into the new north house project, which I pretty much finished up within December, but there’s a few posts that actually will go in tomorrow and Friday, I think, the last part of the timber frame to go in. And then I’m back to doing design work now and have a big project on my own house finally, which will include some hand hewing. So looking forward to that.

CHUCK OLSEN
Great. Well-deserved returning to your own home and your own home project. Thanks, Peter.

PETER HENRIKSON
Okay. Thank you.

Chuck Olsen March 19, 2024