Viking Art by James Graham-Campbell

Author:James Graham-Campbell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
Published: 2021-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

130 This memorial stone from Alstad is from the Ringerike district of southeast Norway, which has given its name to the 11th-century style. The monument (present H 2.7 m/8 ft 10 in.) displays a composition of horses, riders, dogs and birds on one main face, and a characteristic foliate pattern scrolling up the other.

131 Silver disc brooch (D 5 cm/2 in.), from the large hoard found at Espinge, Skåne, deposited c. 1048, decorated with a standard Ringerike-style ‘Great Beast’.

Another exceptional monument from the small Ringerike group, the Dynna stone, will be discussed in Chapter 5 because of the unusual nature of its Christian iconography, with a depiction of the ‘Adoration of the Magi’.[205–6]

The discussion of the Jelling stone in the previous chapter indicated how a fashion for decorated memorial stones was introduced into southern Scandinavia during the reign of Harald Bluetooth, but these stones are in fact few in number. The classic example is that raised at Norra Åsarp, Västergötland (in Sweden), which has a majestic ‘Great Beast’, well endowed with tendril extensions, striding across the centre of the stone, beneath the cross that corresponds with the Jelling Crucifixion.[31c, 132] The runic inscription is, for the most part, contained within the body of the encircling snake, with its profile head and lavish foliate head-lappet.

It was to be in Sweden that the fashion for decorated runestones became most established, with Uppland forming its innovative artistic centre. This special development, related in large part to the adoption of Christianity, is of sufficient significance to require separate treatment below, together with the resurgence of stone-carving on Gotland. Although earlier scholars supposed there to have been a hiatus in the sequence of stone monuments on Gotland, between the ‘picture-stones’ discussed in Chapter 1 and those decorated with the late Viking Age styles, David Wilson has argued (1998) for the likelihood of some degree of continuity.

Turning now to secular ornament, a classic example of the ‘Great Beast’ in Ringerike-style metalwork is to be seen on a silver disc brooch from Sweden.[131] This forms part of one of the largest silver hoards known from Scandinavia (excluding Gotland), weighing about 8.75 kg (19 lb) and dating from the mid-eleventh century. It was buried at Espinge, in Skåne – that area in southern Sweden that then formed part of Viking Age Denmark.

A fine silver disc brooch from a Gotlandic hoard, deposited at Gerete in about 1055, displays a vigorous, but disciplined, design of three ‘ribbon-animals’, tightly interlaced together with their tendril extensions, forming a composition that Fuglesang considers to be transitional to the Urnes style.[133] In contrast, one of two gold disc brooches, found together at Hornelund, Jutland, in Denmark, eschews animal ornament for a complex Ringerike-style foliated pattern.[134] This consists of three encircled palmettes combined with buds and tendrils, within a border of interlocking heart-shaped lobes, each containing a palmette.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.