There is no libfreetype.so.8 on my system:
NetBSD 1.6ZD (APMLM) #0: Tue Oct 21 11:30:06 CDT 2003

Why is gnumeric looking for it when libfreetype.so.9 exists?

Nothing in the pkgsrc build directory that I could see specifically
looks for libfreetype.so.8. so where is this coming from?

 12884 gnumeric open("/usr/pkg/gcc-3.3/lib/libfreetype.so.9", 0, 0xbfbff0fc)
Err#2 ENOENT
 12884 gnumeric open("/usr/lib/libfreetype.so.9", 0, 0xbfbff0fc) Err#2 ENOENT
 12884 gnumeric open("/usr/pkg/lib/libfreetype.so.9", 0, 0xbfbff0fc) = 3
 12884 gnumeric __fstat13(0x3, 0xbfbff0fc)         = 0
 12884 gnumeric mmap(0, 0x9000, 0x3, 0x1002, 0xffffffff, 0, 0, 0) = 1216749568
 12884 gnumeric mmap(0, 0x1000, 0x1, 0x1, 0x3, 0, 0, 0) = 1216786432
 12884 gnumeric munmap(0x4886b000, 0x1000)         = 0
 12884 gnumeric mmap(0, 0x5d000, 0x5, 0x2, 0x3, 0, 0, 0) = 1216786432
 12884 gnumeric mmap(0x488c1000, 0x7000, 0x3, 0x12, 0x3, 0, 0x55000, 0) =
1217138688
 12884 gnumeric mmap(0x488c8000, 0, 0x3, 0x1012, 0xffffffff, 0, 0, 0) =
1217167360
 12884 gnumeric close(0x3)                         = 0

...
 12884 gnumeric open("/usr/pkg/lib/libfreetype.so.8", 0, 0xbfbff0fc) Err#2
ENOENT
 12884 gnumeric open("/usr/X11R6/lib/libfreetype.so.8", 0, 0xbfbff0fc) Err#2
ENOENT
 12884 gnumeric open("/usr/lib/libfreetype.so.8", 0, 0xbfbff0fc) Err#2 ENOENT
 12884 gnumeric write(0x2, 0xbfbff33c, 0x2a)       = 42
       "Shared object "libfreetype.so.8" not found"
 12884 gnumeric write(0x2, 0x481c5aad, 0x1)        = 1
       "\n"

$ ls -l /usr/pkg/lib/libfree*
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel  449660 Oct 16 13:30 /usr/pkg/lib/libfreetype.a
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel     809 Oct 16 13:30 /usr/pkg/lib/libfreetype.la
lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel      18 Oct 16 13:30 /usr/pkg/lib/libfreetype.so ->
libfreetype.so.9.4
lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel      18 Oct 16 13:30 /usr/pkg/lib/libfreetype.so.9 ->
libfreetype.so.9.4
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  424824 Oct 16 13:30 /usr/pkg/lib/libfreetype.so.9.4