Who was Pillar?

In my search for old pictures and drawings, I came across a picture of "Pillar," which appears in the book Dogs of all Nations by Mason, which I mentioned in the blog post Les Races de Chiens (1897) a few days ago.

However, my Danish research colleague, Jørgen Metzdorff, provided me with more information about this picture, and I would like to share this information here.

He mentions that the picture of Pillar was originally published in an article in Vore Hunde in April 1900. Pillar was a so-called war dog that was supposed to play an important role. Jørgen states that a number of Icelandic Sheepdogs were brought from Iceland to Denmark around 1890 to fulfill communication roles.

The dogs were part of a military experiment in which Icelandic Sheepdogs were used to carry messages between advancing units, so-called war dogs. The experiment was initiated by Captain Christensen, and the Icelandic Sheepdog was selected because of its versatility, independence, and intelligence.

However, the use of the Icelandic Sheepdog as war dogs remained an experiment only, as message delivery was soon taken over by other inventions.

Pillar lived with Sergeant Lindholm in Aalborg and was awarded an honorary prize at the Danish Kennel Club Show in 1897, as well as first prizes in 1898 and 1899.

As far as we know, Pillar was used for breeding twice. The book The Iceland Dog by Mark Watson contains pictures from Danish Kennel Club show catalogues. Two of the pictures are from the July 1900 show, where three of Pillar's offspring (born in 1899 after Svartur) participated. The other two pictures are from a 1901 dog show in Copenhagen, showing two other offspring of Pillar (born in 1900 after Sampa, owned by Sergeant Andersen). All of the offspring were owned by Sergeant Lindholm.

Some of these dogs were for sale for 50-100 DKK, which in today’s value equals 3,600-7,200 DKK.

A small side note: An average Danish worker earned 0.39 DKK per hour according to data from 1907. If this amount is adjusted for 2024, it would equal 33 DKK per hour. In 1900, it took about 250 work hours to pay for a dog. The average salary in Denmark in 2024 is 240 DKK per hour – so, using the same assumptions, a dog would cost around 60,000 DKK or 1.2 million ISK. Dogs were relatively expensive at that time compared to today.

Thus, Pillar gained fame in Denmark during these years, and a picture of her was later used in Mason’s book.