Police say vandals toppled a 100-year-old Viking statue along a river running through Philadelphia.
Authorities found the 7-foot-4-inch statue of Thorfinn Karlsefni submerged in the Schuylkill (SKOO’-kul) River around 2:30 a.m. Tuesday. The statue represents the Icelandic explorer who is thought to have visited America around 1004 A.D.
No arrests have been made in connection with the recent damage.
The statue weighs several thousand pounds, and police say they will need a crane to pull it from the water.
This is not the first time the statue has been vandalized. The statue was spray painted in the past, and it was also the site of white nationalist demonstrations. Doug Martenson, an art conservationist who has renovated the statue after previous vandalism, estimated it could cost thousands of dollars to repair.
