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The Bird, the Animal and the Human in Nordic Iron Age Art

The Bird, the Animal and the Human in Nordic Iron Age Art

TEXT: BENTE MAGNUS
PHOTO: GÉRARD FRANCESCHI
COMPOSITION: ASGER JORN


10,000 YEARS OF NORDIC FOLK ART

BORGENS FORLAG

NORDIC IRON AGE VOLUME 2

• Localities situated near each other

Selected locality names:

  1. Tytårsaari, Russland
  2. Gulldynt, Voyri
  3. Kjuloholm, Köyliö
  4. Papinsaari, Kuhmoinen
  5. Kirmukarmu, Vesilahti
  6. Joensuu, Halliko
  7. Helgö, Uppland
  8. Birka, Uppland
  9. Gamla Uppsala, Uppland
  10. Vendel, Uppland
  11. Valsgärde, Uppland
  12. Ålleberg, Västergötland
  13. Uppåkra, Skåne
  14. Kållunge, Gotland
  15. Torslunda, Öland
  16. Stora Ihre, Gotland
  17. Sorte Muld, Bornholm
  18. Himlingøje, Sjælland
  19. Lejre, Sjælland
  20. Gudme, Fyn
  21. Vimose, Fyn
  22. Søllested, Fyn
  23. Hedeby, Schleswig, Tyskland
  24. Ribe, Jylland
  25. Gallehus, Jylland
  26. Nydam, Jylland
  27. Ejsbøl, Jylland
  28. Mammen, Jylland
  29. Jelling, Jylland
  30. Dejbjerg, Jylland
  31. Tune, Østfold
  32. Åker, Hedmark
  33. Oseberg, Vestfold
  34. Borre, Vestfold
  35. Kaupang, Vestfold
  36. Snartemo, Vest-Agder
  37. Gausel, Stavanger
  38. Åk, Romsdal
  39. Hol, Nord-Trøndelag
  40. Borg, Lofoten.

THE BIRD, THE ANIMAL AND THE HUMAN IN NORDIC IRON AGE ART

Bente Magnus

The Bird, the Animal and the Human

In the legend of Sigurd Fåvnesbane there is a famous scene where Sigurd, at the request of the smith Regin, roasts the heart of the slain serpent Fåvne while Regin takes a nap. When Sigurd touches the heart to feel if it is fully roasted, he burns his finger and puts it in his mouth. He then suddenly understands what the birds chirping in the tree are saying—he understands the language of birds, and learns that Regin has planned to kill him.

The belief that birds saw everything and could predict human fate goes back to the oldest Indian written sources and is a recurring theme in folk tales. “If only humans knew what we know,” say the birds. Both Romans and Germanic peoples tried to obtain this knowledge of birds through oracles. Tacitus relates in his book about the Germanic peoples from 98 AD (chapter 10): “Also in Germania the very widespread custom of seeking omens from the chirping and flight of birds is known.” Which birds were considered capable of giving oracle omens varied. But certain characteristics were important, either together or alone: The bird’s size, its colour(s), its strength, its rarity, its movements, the variation of its song/sound and the strength of its song. It also mattered greatly where the sound of the bird came from, i.e., whether the bird was hidden or whether it sat on an important building or in an important tree, easily visible, and in which direction one first saw it. A good deal of this still persists as “old superstition,” such as the belief that large owls like the tawny owl and eagle owl herald death, that it matters from which side one sees the first wagtail in spring, and that the cuckoo’s call in early summer is associated with eroticism. Some large birds like whooper swans and cranes, and smaller birds like lapwings, golden plovers and swallows came annually with the light and spring to the North. When they departed again in autumn, they took with them the light and warmth and left humans to the forces of darkness and cold.

Humans in the Iron Age had a special relationship with certain animals and birds. These were objects of admiration, respect and fear, and they constitute the main motifs in art. The Christian notion that humans were the masters of animals, since God had created only humans in His image, did not exist. Odin could transform himself into any animal or bird he wished, and certain humans were also considered to have this ability. Based on the Old Norse sagas and inscriptions on Viking Age runestones, we know which wild animals and birds were particularly used as men’s names in the later Iron Age—Ulv (Wolf), Bjørn (Bear), Orm (Serpent), Hauk (Hawk), Ørn (Eagle), Ravn (Raven). In the earlier Iron Age, however, the names we know from runic inscriptions are partly formed according to other principles. Here we encounter Lægæst, HagustaldaR, Wagnija and Nithijo, but also WiduhundaR which means “forest hound” and may well be a poetic paraphrase for wolf, as well as Stridsulv (Battle-Wolf), Sverdulv (Sword-Wolf) and Hærulv (Army-Wolf), which on the memorial stones are written HaÞuwulafR, HaeruwulafiR and HariwulafR. The theophoric names, i.e., those containing an animal name, indicate which animals and birds were believed to have special qualities such as intelligence, strength, endurance, cunning, wisdom. With an animal designation as a first name, it was thought that the animal’s or bird’s qualities would be transferred to the man. Some scholars have wanted to see the most important gods behind this type of men’s names because there is evidently a connection between theophoric names, Germanic beliefs and the animals depicted on objects and picture stones. Let us look more closely at these animal/men’s names.

The raven was considered the best oracle bird. It is the most intelligent of all birds and can adapt to the most varied environments and situations. Its black, glossy plumage and dark beak distinguish it from other corvids. In the Eddic poems the raven is mentioned more often than any other bird as a corpse-eater on the battlefield. If the raven is taken from the nest when young, it is easy to tame and can be taught to articulate words. The most important deity of the Germanic peoples, Odin, had two ravens, Hugin and Munin, thought and memory, which each day flew out over the world and gathered information for their master. The ravens are thus an image of Odin’s mental faculties. In the Bible’s creation account, the raven is the first bird that Noah sends out from the ark to scout over the earth and give Noah information about conditions after the flood.

The eagle, the largest of all Nordic birds of prey, was a symbol of Odin, and one of his names was the eagle-headed. The eagle soared at great heights and with its sharp vision had an overview of what happened far below it, just as Odin when he sat on his high seat, Hlidskjalf, and looked out over the world. The eagle has a powerful beak and large talons that enable it to strike down relatively large prey such as lambs and kids. The eagle is also the attribute animal of the evangelist John and was, in the Christian Roman Empire from the reign of Emperor Theodosius I, a sign of conversion to Christianity.

The smaller birds of prey were called haukr (hawk), and there was no special designation for falcon. Both were hunting birds for the aristocracy in the new form of hunting that took place on horseback and came to the North after the Migration Period. Hawk and falcon are fast and skilled hunters, and a hunting falcon could even take on combat with a bird as large as a crane. In the boat graves from Vendel and Valsgärde in Uppland from the later Iron Age, several of the warriors are equipped with a complete set of birds of prey in addition to dogs and horses.

The wolf is light, fast and agile and hunts in packs. Its howl creates fear even in modern humans. A wolf pack that has brought down large prey gorges on meat and blood until hardly a scrap of fur remains. The god Odin had two wolves, Freki and Geri, i.e., the greedy one. He let them eat from the dead bodies on the battlefield. In the saga of Egil Skallagrimsson, it is told in the introduction that Egil’s grandfather was named Ulv Bjalvesson. It was said of him that he was a powerful man and a good estate manager. He could give good advice about everything because he was a very wise man. But as evening approached, he became antisocial, so that few could get him to talk. He became drowsy; people said that he was hamram, i.e., that he could change his form (shape). He was called Kveldulv (Evening-Wolf). Since his name was Ulv (Wolf), it was a wolf’s form that his free-soul assumed while his body apparently lay sleeping in the evening.

The bear, on the other hand, mostly keeps to itself except for a she-bear with cubs. Among the Sámi, the bear has been the foremost in the animal world, and bear hunting has always been highly ritualized. The bear was perceived as a very special animal. It walks on the soles of its feet, i.e., walks on the whole foot like a human, it can climb trees, rise up and walk on two legs like a human and goes into hibernation in autumn. Then it disappears, but with spring it returns, and in the case of a female bear, she has with her one or two cubs. But what has caused the bear to have such a prominent position in myths and later folk belief is that a flayed bear carcass resembles a human’s and that even the skeleton has similarities with a human’s. From there it is not far to notions that the bear is a transformed human. The bear has the strength of ten men and the wit of twelve men, says an old proverb, and prominent women and men in the Iron Age were buried or cremated lying on a bearskin with the claws preserved. The head, however, is never included.

Certain elite warriors in the later Iron Age were called berserkir and ulfhednar. Berserkr means either bear-shirt or without armour, ulfhednir means clad in wolfskin. Probably with the help of some kind of intoxicant, the warriors put themselves into an ecstatic state of blind rage before battle and thereby became completely insensitive to pain and danger. This power, says Snorri Sturluson in Ynglinga saga, they received from Odin, whose Germanic name Wotan means the raging one: “…his own men went without armour and were mad like dogs and wolves, they bit their shields, were strong as bears or bulls; they killed all people, and neither fire nor iron bit them. This is called berserkrgang.”

The serpent was one of Odin’s helper spirits and could be sent on missions to the underworld. It sheds its skin, disappears into cavities in the earth and is gone during winter. In Snorri Sturluson’s Skáldskaparmál he tells the myth about the origin of the art of poetry. The giant Suttung had obtained the mead of poetry, which was kept in three vessels, and set his daughter Gunnlod to guard them inside the mountain. Odin tricked another giant into boring a hole in the mountain wall. Then he transformed himself into a serpent and crawled in to Gunnlod, and through lovemaking stole the mead from her. Therefore he was also the god of the art of poetry.

Yet no one was named after the pig or boar despite the fact that the wild boar played a role in mythology and as a totem animal. This may be connected to the fact that the wild boar had long been extinct throughout Scandinavia in the later Iron Age, and that wild boar hunting was therefore something that only a few Nordic men had participated in, perhaps among kinsmen in present-day Baltic states or Poland. The motif, which does not occur often in Scandinavia, may therefore have been adopted from continental Germanic peoples.

Wild boars are both strong, fast and dangerous in addition to having large litters of young and thus becoming a symbol of fertility. Apart from the phenomenon of the swine-array (svinefylking) where warriors line up in a V-shape like a pig’s snout and which is connected to Odin, the wild boar was associated with the Vanir gods Freyja and Freyr. Freyja was both a goddess of fertility and death and shared the fallen on the battlefield with Odin. In the poem Hyndluljóð it is told that when Freyja wanted to give her favourite Ottar the Simple a disguise, she transformed him into a pig, Hildisvíni, i.e., battle-pig. Then he gained the wild boar’s strength, speed and fearlessness. On the warrior’s helmet in Vendel grave XIV, a procession of warriors is depicted where one wears a wild boar mask with large tusks. In a hoard find from Öland with bronze matrices for producing image plates for helmets, one of the matrices shows two helmet-wearing warriors with wild boars on the helmet crest (Volume 1, 50-51). The god Freyr’s pig was named Gullinborsti and was created by the dwarves. It could travel over land and sea both in daylight and in darkness because its bristles shone like gold, which perhaps may be connected to the fact that wild boars are nocturnal animals. In Odin’s Valhalla there was the boar Sæhrímnir, which must be counted as an ordinary pig. It was slaughtered and cooked every evening when Odin had awakened the fallen warriors back to life after the day’s combat training. Sæhrímnir was just as whole the next day and could be consumed for all eternity. Odin had the ability to resurrect humans and animals from the dead. The goddess Freyja was called sýr, sow, by certain skalds in the 900s, and Olav Haraldsson, the later Saint Olav’s stepfather Sigurd, who was a petty king in Ringerike, had the byname Sýr. Here it is also the ordinary domesticated pig that must be the basis for the byname. Whether this was as derogatory as we perceive it today is uncertain.

The horse was the only one of the domesticated animals that was considered to stand between the gods and humans and therefore had an entirely unique status. Tacitus relates: “But peculiar to the Germanic peoples is that they also take omens and prophecies from horses. Horses of this kind are raised at common expense and kept in the aforementioned sacred groves and woods; they are entirely white and are never defiled by being used for ordinary work. They are harnessed to a sacred wagon, and the tribe’s priest or king or chieftain follows them and observes how they neigh and snort. And no omen is received with greater trust, not only by common people, but also by the high-born and the priests. For the priests consider themselves merely servants of the gods, while the horses in their opinion are the gods’ confidants.” That the god Baldr’s horse stumbled and injured its foot was, for example, an omen of Baldr’s death. Horse sacrifice was the most sacred of all sacrifices to the god Freyr, and the sacrificial meal of boiled horse meat the most important of all. In the Migration Period it became common to bury mounted warriors, chieftains and kings together with their horses. The first king of the Franks, the Merovingian Childeric, who died 482 AD, was buried in an enormous burial mound in Tournai in Belgium. At least 21 horses were slaughtered and buried in three large pits placed around the mound. Twelve horses were killed and accompanied the Oseberg queen on her last journey in her ship in Vestfold, Norway in 834 AD. Horses had many roles in the upper echelons of society, and they were a sign of power and wealth. Their role as oracle animals standing between gods and humans surely played a great part when they were killed and placed in the grave. It also happened that horses received their own graves, and the earliest known in the North so far was found in a burial ground from the 3rd century in Udby on Sjælland. Odin’s horse, Sleipnir, was a shamanic creation whose name means “the gliding one,” i.e., the one that moves between worlds. It was grey, had eight legs and on its teeth runes were inlaid.

Fylgja and Free-Soul

According to Old Norse belief about the soul, each human was born with a kind of shadow figure in the form of an animal, a fylgja (follower), which went before them throughout life. It functioned as the human’s alter ego, an external soul that the human had in addition to the body-soul and which lived and died together with its human. A human could see their animal follower in dreams, and this was then a portent that he or she would soon die. If, however, one saw other people’s followers in dreams, it was a sign that something was going to happen. It is likely that the beliefs about the follower are connected with the afterbirth, but the connection between this and the follower in animal form is unclear. The belief that humans had a body that housed a free-soul was the foundation for shamanism, where Odin was the supreme practitioner. Through ecstasy or trance, a shaman or völva could split body and soul and send the soul out on a mission to solve a great problem or crisis. The body then remained as if it were sleeping or dead and soulless. The free-soul was transformed into an animal or bird, into the shaman’s helper spirits. Odin transformed himself into the animals and humans he needed in his eternal search for knowledge, and as shown above, the most common men’s names in the later Iron Age can be connected to Odin.

Animals as Motif

The art that was created during the last 6-700 years of the Iron Age made use of motifs that precisely allude to transformation/metamorphosis from human to animal, from animal to human and Odin’s role as the foremost shaman and greatest magician, but also as the warrior aristocracy’s foremost deity. The few human figures that occasionally appear among the animal figures probably represent Odin himself or some of his helpers. Characteristic of the art is that all surfaces on the ornamented objects are filled with animal and bird figures that can rarely be attributed to any particular species. It is also typical that every single termination on straps, buckles, fibulae and mounts ends with a mask, an animal head or a bird of prey head. The art styles change throughout the Iron Age from around 450-1100 AD and are called animal styles or animal ornamentation because four-legged animal figures seen in profile are the main motif. The styles are associated with the upper echelons of society who actively use them both politically and as part of a symbolic and ideological communication.

In fact, animal motifs are included among Germanic ruler and warrior symbols much earlier, but then with clear influence from provincial Roman craftsmanship. On the silver beakers from one of the Sjælland Himlingøje graves from the first half of the 3rd century, for example, there is a frieze in pressed, gilded silver sheet below the rim edge (Book 1, 11-13), cf. drawing. The friezes are not entirely identical but contain the same motif, namely crouching, profile warriors holding a Roman ring-pommel sword. The warriors wear helmets and seem to be watching a series of animals and birds in a landscape. The scenes unfold from left to right. We recognize a horse with bent forelegs and a large round knob under the hindquarters. In front of the horse stand two smaller birds that almost look like ducks, then a large bird with a long neck, curved beak and powerful talons—the only one looking backward. On one beaker there are also two male masks with long moustaches. They are placed so that one appears as a mirror image of the other. Then follows a goat or chamois, another horse and a warrior. The last horse (?) is depicted in profile with four legs in contrast to the others which are only shown with two legs. Does that mean it had eight legs? None of the animals, however, can be classified as predators, but the large bird may be a large bird of prey.

Here is a “comic strip” that must be evaluated in relation to the grave’s other contents. The grave, in which the silver beakers were included as an important part, was one of several found during gravel digging in 1828 whose context is not entirely clear. By analogy with other graves that contained silver beakers of the same type, the buried person was a man, whose other grave goods consisted of Roman glass and bronze vessels. He belonged to the royal dynasty which over the course of about three generations until the middle of the 3rd century dominated Sjælland, Fyn and perhaps Skåne. Although he was not buried with weapons, it is likely that he was both a warrior and military leader. It is theoretically possible that he may have participated alongside Germanic kinsmen in the great wars of that time between Romans and Germanic peoples, the Marcomannic Wars in Bohemia. Both the friezes of the silver beakers and the large finger ring with raven heads from Himlingøje suggest that already around 250 AD there existed an iconographic connection between certain animals, certain birds and warriors in the upper echelons of Germanic society, but this cannot be called animal style.

Those Who Lost the Battle

The great weapon offering finds from Nydam bog, Vimose, Illerup ådal and Ejsbøl bog illustrate the emergence of animal ornamentation from the 3rd century through the 5th century. It was a time marked by plundering and conflicts. Those who managed to gain power did so with the help of well-trained warriors whom they had in their service and a large network of family, kinship and powerful persons who were connected to them through marriage, fosterage and as hostages. The network could extend over large parts of non-Roman Europe. Gold was an important ingredient in acquiring power and loyal followers, and neck, arm and finger rings of gold were important loyalty gifts. A Roman gold ring with a signet depicting the god Bonus Eventus was naturally a status marker in the same way as the raven-head rings, but points to the wearer’s continental contacts. Heavier, Germanic gold rings only with stamp ornamentation have been entirely essential in societies where the exclusive gift was a means that petty kings and chieftains used to bind other people to them, whether professional warriors or alliance partners of all kinds. The weapon offering finds have shown that the armies were already professionally organized around 200 AD. The hierarchy is clearly evident in both the use of precious metals and the number of weapon types and equipment. The warriors with their leaders were gathered from large areas, and a military campaign must have been carefully planned well in advance. Each officer probably led his contingent of warriors. The leaders were mounted, dressed appropriately in colourful clothes that showed their rank and made them clearly visible during the course of battle. They carried splendid swords with Roman blades, and the red shield had a boss of silver with gilded details and with mounts in the form of male masks of the same precious metals. Arm rings and finger rings were of gold, and the horses were equipped with harnesses of gilded bronze. These were representatives of the Scandinavian elite, and the Germanic warrior aristocracy on the continent was equipped more or less similarly.

In the year 375, the Huns, a Mongol equestrian people, unexpectedly broke into the relationship between Romans and Germanic peoples with their attack on the Goths who lived by the Black Sea. In the next 75 years the Huns managed to appropriate power and dominion over several Germanic peoples in Europe and reached far westward. The legends about their king Attila and the Huns’ different war culture became myths that lived on for many hundreds of years in Germanic skaldic poems. The Huns’ influence on the Germanic peoples’ beliefs and rituals, art and warrior culture is little known. They are perceived as a parenthesis in Europe’s history during the Migration Period and are considered only to have contributed to the Germanic peoples the eagle as a symbol and the use of blood-red garnets set in gold. But it is thought-provoking that at the time they suffered their final defeat and were “erased” from history at the Battle of the Nedao River in the year 454, the first animal style was created in Scandinavia.

Ejsbøl offering bog near Haderslev in Sønderjylland has been a sacral area throughout the first 500 years AD. How many times battles occurred between invaders and regional military forces in this part of Jylland we do not know, but so far the large bog area has been shown to conceal weapons and equipment from several offerings. During excavations in the bog between 1955 and 1964, equipment from a defeated military force of around 200 men from ca. 300 AD came to light. Weapons and equipment were, as usual in war booty finds, hacked, twisted, bent and beaten to pieces before being sacrificed to a deity by throwing the pieces into the water. South of this deposit, a younger concentration of exclusive and specially selected weapons was found. Three swords with cast, hourglass-shaped grips and scabbards with mounts of gilded silver, and in addition three belt buckles of gilded silver. To these princely equipped sword sets probably belong at least eight more swords with simpler equipment. The splendid swords with their equipment were deposited in the early Migration Period, in the early 5th century AD and are among the latest Danish weapon offering finds. The ornamentation on the belt buckles with their mount plates shows a completely different conception of the animal motif than the raven-head ring and silver beaker from Himlingøje and the small animal brooch with the doe with crescent-moon horns and her little calf. Gone is the pressed sheet metal and the cautious use of stamps; now deep relief with sharp ridges and the use of niello to highlight certain details applies. All conceivable end pieces terminate with an animal head in profile or en face. The eyes are circular and often protrude. On the relatively small surface that the belt buckle from Ejsbøl constitutes, no fewer than six animal heads are pressed in. All empty spaces are filled, even inside the jaws of the profile animal heads a small animal head can be seen. The heads are plastic, and it is clear that the figures represent animals, almost fabulous animals. The mount plate itself is divided into geometric fields filled with spiral ornamentation in sharp relief, what is called chip-carving ornamentation and which is actually a wood-carving technique. It shows a clear legacy from provincial Roman ornamentation, particularly as it appears on belt buckles on provincial Roman military belts from the same period. The bird of prey heads on the hook and loop are with their slanted eyes and sharp, curved beaks something quite different from the raven-head ring’s bird of prey heads. But there is a kinship, namely the motif itself.

We are in the Migration Period where the predator and the bird of prey constitute the main motifs in art. Between 400 and 450 they occupy increasingly more space on large dress brooches, weapons and belt equipment. In the Sösdala style, the goldsmiths work with a two-dimensional flat style in silver where cautious use of stamp ornamentation, alternation between gilded and non-gilded areas and quite naturalistic animal heads is characteristic. The surfaces are at rest, and there is no need to exploit empty spaces. Different is the Nydam style, named after the first weapon offering find from Nydam bog ca. 6 km northwest of Sønderborg. The Nydam style is also found on sword equipment, mounts for splendid belts and bandoliers and relief brooches, all of silver and cast in moulds of fired clay. The surface is exploited to bursting point, and the deep relief lets light play and create shadows. Here are several animal figures, which often climb on the outside of the brooches, and birds of prey seen in profile as well as the occasional human. But the women’s graves show that not only the chieftain/military leader stands strong in the Migration Period’s animal/human beliefs. The women’s large dress brooches, the relief brooches, are examples of the goldsmiths’ finest works of art. Even among the early jewellery sets, the enigmatic animal ornamentation is found.

The Mistress of Hol

Unfortunately, it began with yet another version of the old story: A farmer wanted to remove a “cairn” that lay by the barn bridge and quickly came down to a burial cist of large stone slabs, 4 m long and 80 cm wide. It was filled with earth and was thoroughly disturbed. In this way a number of objects were found that belonged to one of the most exciting women’s graves from the early Migration Period from Mid-Norway. The woman had been equipped with a casket, clay vessels and textile implements and was laid to rest in a costume that required several silver fibulae. It had been held together at the waist by a 2 cm wide leather belt with a bronze belt ring. The ring is surrounded by five horses in openwork and the strap mount itself is shaped like a male mask. From her belt hung her keys on a key ring and two knives, one of which had a silver ferrule. Among her many smaller dress brooches are two S-shaped ones of gilded silver with profile animal heads. A unique, almost equal-armed bow brooch of gilded silver that terminates with an animal head en face at each end may have sat low on the chest and given the peplos gown a gathered effect. The bow between the brooch’s two parts has both stamp ornamentation and a classical meander border in deep relief. On both sides of the bow there is a set of bird of prey heads with strongly curved beaks, below that a human head in profile and an arm with a hand and spread thumb and below that an animal head in profile with a long, serpent-like body. There is an invisible central axis through the entire brooch from one tip to the other, and the motifs are approximately the same on both sides of this central axis.

The motif of a human figure between predators recurs on the large relief brooch, also of gilded silver and completely unique. The headplate has silver knobs attached to a small strip of silver. The ornamentation consists of a row of seahorse-like animals with striped bodies and pointed heads with round eyes looking backward. Inside these is a row of quadrilateral fields with square knobs and then a spiral ornament, both in deep relief. The brooch foot itself is angled like a roof (gabled-foot brooch) and has at the top the same spiral ornament as on the brooch’s upper part. But the interesting part is the images that are drawn naturalistically. On the right half, at the top, a crouched (or squatting) human figure is seen, a man in profile with his arm bent and his hand with spread thumb in front of his face. He is drawn with stamps and is bareheaded. The costume consists of trousers and a tunic with a belt. Below him is a profile animal with a short, broad head and open jaws. The animal seems to grip the man with its legs. Behind the back of the animal, yet another profile animal crawls. On the left half, three animal figures crawl; the uppermost with a narrow, long head that seems to bite at a short, powerful animal with open jaws and sharp teeth. Below lies an animal with its head up toward the middle animal’s back and a body that is serpent-like but with hind legs. The animals are clearly characterized and are obviously meant to represent different figures in a kind of drama where the crouching man plays the main role. On the equal-armed brooch there were two human figures with hand up and spread thumb surrounded by birds of prey and wild animals. What do the images represent? Most likely it concerns the god Odin, and perhaps in a context where he fights against and overcomes the demons of the realm of death.

The Hol woman’s brooch set as well as keys and weaving implements show that she was a mistress of the house, a woman with power and authority within the farm. According to the grave finds, there have been many such powerful women along the long Norwegian coast from Vestfold to Nord-Trøndelag in the Migration Period. Their keys symbolize their responsibility for the household and the textile implements the responsibility for the production of textiles and clothes for everyone. But the fate goddesses, the Norns, also wove humans’ lives from birth to death so that the life pattern was determined when the child was born. Together with the brooches’ ornamentation that revolves around Odin and his roles as shaman, the textile implements suggest that the women had special abilities to “see” into the future and have thus played an essential role in the rituals connected with seid. This ability is already pointed out by Tacitus (chapter 8 in Germania) as something Germanic women possessed. Therefore they were consulted, and the men heeded their advice. Several well-known Romans attached themselves to a Germanic seeress, a sibyl. In Ynglinga saga chapter 7, Snorri Sturluson writes: “Odin mastered the art that is accompanied by the greatest power, and he practised it himself, that is seid. Therefore he could know people’s fates, and that which had not yet happened; he could give people death or misfortune or illness, he could take wit or strength from people, and he could give it to others. But with this sorcery follows so much unmanliness that menfolk cannot practise it without shame, and therefore the gyðjur were taught it.” A gyðja was a female cult leader.

Animal Style

Approximately halfway through the 5th century, a distinct art style is created in southern Scandinavia where animal figures are central. It finds its strongest expression on the large relief brooches of gilded silver or bronze that were worn by special high-born women with important roles as mistress and cult leader. The animal ornamentation on these splendid brooches, which are the finest that the Migration Period goldsmiths produced, also became of great importance for Germanic peoples in Europe in their search for identity and firm grounding in a new world after the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476. This first animal style is called Style I and has been important for all of Scandinavia’s peasant population. It did not lose its significance until around the middle of the 6th century. The Nydam style, its predecessor, is characterized among other things by borders built on classical motifs such as spirals in various compositions, meanders and egg-and-dart. Animals and human figures are depicted coherently and to a large degree naturalistically. In the Nydam style, each object is almost unique, and the style seems to have belonged to the upper echelons of society. In Style I the figures are dissolved by their individual parts being emphasized with contours. Each part lives its own life and is often used without any connection to the rest. The naturalistic is replaced by abbreviations, stylization and abstraction. Not without reason has Style I been compared to the Cubists and Picasso’s art. Style I broke sharply with Roman principles for ornamental art, namely a naturalistic representation of motifs.

Masterpiece

On the Galsted brooch, the classical motif of a human between two animals still exists in the background. But the animals have no root in reality—they are symbols. Each limb is surrounded by a double contour, the body is a broad band and the head is simplified by the eyebrow arch being enlarged and extended. What do the two kneeling animal figures with the open jaws that seem to be swallowing the man’s head represent? Since they are kneeling, it is most likely that they are the man’s servants, and that their open jaws rather suggest that they are telling him something than that they are in the process of swallowing him. The man’s head has staring, protruding eyes and a half-open mouth. This is probably a representation of the god Odin in trance surrounded by two of his helper spirits who whisper to him what they have seen on their journey to where they were sent. The Galsted brooch was found in a bog together with a gold bracteate showing a man in ecstatic movement. The motif is interpreted as Odin in trance in combat with demons.

The relief brooch from Gummersmark on Sjælland is also a bog find in which 8 gold bracteates and 10 beads are included. The brooch is of silver and in form is a typical flat-footed brooch divided into three parts—headplate, bow and foot. Its ornamentation contains all features of the early animal style. A relatively high and wide strip with zigzag pattern in niello divides the foot’s images into an inner and an outer zone. The strip transitions at the top into two profile animal heads with pointed ears, pointed-oval eyes and open jaws. At the bottom the strip terminates in an animal mask with protruding, round eyes and large, round nostrils. The inner image field is built up with horizontal fields. At the top is a small figure with large round eyes and a spread-out body. The field below contains a crouched human figure with a helmet and hands clasped behind the back. The next field shows two animal masks en face. The pointed ears lie outside the strip and between them is a circular figure like a large eye. The masks have slanting eyes and distinct nostrils below two horizontal lines. Across the masks runs a strip with zigzag border. Right below the masks is seen a bird of prey viewed from above. The body is spread out and the legs lie along the sides. The tail feathers are marked with vertical strips. On the outside of the strip at the bottom on each side of the mask is a profile animal figure with pointed ears and a long, curled tongue. At the top of the foot on each side of the bow is a fairly naturalistic animal figure, almost like a dog.

The brooch’s headplate is rectangular and has a border of geometric figures on the outermost edge. The figures—an isosceles triangle with a circle on top—are also found on other relief brooches as well as on western Norwegian, asbestos-tempered ceramics from this period and on the Ostrogothic king Theoderic’s mausoleum in Ravenna, Italy. It is thus a widespread symbol, but what does it mean? Between the triangles in each corner is seen a mask and in the middle of the long side a large male mask showing an open mouth with many teeth. If one turns the brooch, the mask becomes an animal mask and belongs together with the spread-out animal figure without a head that lies in the field below, divided in two by a broad strip. The spread-out animal becomes in turn a large mask with slanting eyes and an open, laughing mouth. On each side at the bottom of the headplate is a rectangular field with two human figures. Both have helmets and their gaze turned upward. They wear tunics with a broad border at the bottom, and the right figure’s leg position seems to suggest that he is performing a kind of dance. The kinship with the later gold foil figures is obvious. The relief brooch from Gummersmark is a masterpiece that must have been deposited in the bog together with a necklace of gold bracteates and glass beads as a votive offering to a deity. It is again the powerful mistress we sense, and her special jewellery that points to her role as leader of cultic activities. The western Norwegian women of her rank were buried with their “insignia,” but elsewhere in Scandinavia they were apparently deposited as votive offerings, often in a bog, perhaps in connection with the woman’s death.

The Gummersmark brooch’s motifs point to myths that are lost to us. But they seem to concern the god Odin and his ability to transform. What looks like a male mask becomes an animal mask and part of a large, spread-out animal. In Ynglinga saga Snorri says this about Odin: “Odin often changed form [shape]; then his body lay as if dead or sleeping, but he himself was a bird or four-legged animal, fish or serpent and went in an instant to distant lands, on errands for himself and for others…” Odin was the greatest shaman and magician and could transgress all boundaries: between the living and the dead, between man and woman, between animal and human.

Animal or human masks, birds of prey and animal figures are the main motifs on the relief brooches. Another characteristic feature is that the representation is divided, i.e., a central axis divides the relief brooches’ ornamentation into two symmetrical parts so that the image surface is spread out. But there are always elements of asymmetry that have a meaning, such as the two warriors on the Gummersmark brooch. If one covers half of an en face mask that is always divided with a long ridge of the nose, each half becomes an animal or bird of prey head in profile. Everything is as it appears to be and at the same time it is something else.

The enigmatic quality of the relief brooches’ ornamentation becomes even more accentuated later in the Migration Period. The figures become more dissolved, and often a limb or a head represents a whole figure. There are human heads with animal bodies and vice versa. The message that lies in the brooches’ iconography becomes more strongly encoded, and it is difficult to find a unified motif. But it has been important to show eyes. They are found everywhere and must have to do with seeing—certain women’s ability to “see” into the future. On the large relief brooch from Lundbjers in Lummelunda on Gotland there is a mask that terminates the foot and a mask on each side of the bow. They have slanting, dangerous eyes. Bird of prey heads with sharp beaks and slanting eyes lie one after another along the outer edge and inside the triangular inner field where a triangular, red garnet constitutes the centre point. Garnets are also found on the headplate as a kind of resting place for the gaze in an otherwise completely incomprehensible ornamentation.

The relief brooch from Øvernhornbæk is a bog find that also contained gold bracteates and glass beads. The brooch is damaged before it was deposited in the bog in that the lower part of the foot with the terminating mask is broken off. The mask may have functioned as an amulet in other contexts. The animal figures around the headplate are openwork and band-shaped, and the two square decorative knobs are each surrounded by a spiral tendril. A similar tendril is found on the sword hilt from Snartemo in Vest-Agder, where the knob is guarded by two animal figures in the round with bird of prey beaks. The Snartemo sword is one of the few grave-found splendid swords known from Scandinavia’s Migration Period. In the bogs’ weapon offerings, however, they are numerous. Such a sword often passed down as an heirloom, and many had names. They were equipped with ornamentation and figure scenes in Style I but not of the enigmatic kind that the women’s relief brooches had.

The large relief brooches are masterpieces of metalwork in gilded silver or bronze. The artists who created the brooches were magicians and their works filled with magic. The cultic aspect of the relief brooches is reinforced by the fact that some have a runic inscription on the back, and on one of them stands: I, Vi, carve runes for Vivja, the beloved. Vi or ve means a sacred place, a place where specially chosen people gained contact with the gods and where the persecuted could find protection.

A New Era

Around the middle of the 6th century, art changes so strongly in character that it must be connected with profound changes in society. The cryptic and secretive Style I evidently no longer fulfils any function in Scandinavia; the grand-scale bog offerings of war booty and gold as well as the powerful women’s relief brooches and gold bracteates cease. Farms and burial grounds are abandoned in the peripheral areas of the North, and the centre of gravity in Scandinavia shifts from the North Sea toward the Baltic Sea. Among the many Germanic tribes that came together in larger units on the continent, the first Germanic animal style, Style I, still fulfilled an important function for a long time in a chaotic and uncertain time. Among Anglo-Saxons in England, among Lombards, Goths, Gepids, Alemanni, their newly formed kingdoms were threatened by the Frankish Merovingians’ expansion of their territory. For although most of the continental Germanic peoples had become Christians, the royal lineages had a need to acquire legitimacy and a history that established the connection to a distant past. Little by little the Frankish Merovingians had incorporated the kingdoms of the Burgundians, Alemanni, Thuringians, Bavarians, Rhine Franks and partly the Saxons into the Frankish realm. Of the independent Germanic kingdoms that arose after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, around the year 600 only those of the Visigoths in southern France and on the Iberian Peninsula and the Lombards in northern and central Italy remained. At the same time, the Byzantine Empire expanded from Asia Minor over the Balkans to parts of Italy and Spain. Avars and Slavs expanded their territories along the Danube and northwestward toward the Baltic Sea.

A new ornamentation arises built on animals and birds of prey as motifs and with interlace as the unifying principle. The style is called Style II and is used from the middle of the 6th to the end of the 8th century throughout the entire Germanic Europe, but least among the Franks. At the same time, the Merovingian Franks are the leaders in Europe. Their king Clovis converts to Catholic Christianity around the year 500 and not to Arianism like most other Germanic peoples, which would later prove to be a wise choice in relation to the papal see in Rome. Several thousand warriors in Clovis’s retinue had themselves baptized. The great armies consisted of men from many different tribes, including Scandinavian ones. They had a common lifestyle based on a common ideology where hero worship and the warrior’s role and life after death played a central role. The ideas about Odin’s Valhalla were replaced with a Christian ideology when the warriors were baptized. The Merovingians and other royal lineages seem to have buried their members with full personal equipment in newly built churches. The nobility followed suit and equipped their graves in large wooden chests or chambers with jewellery of precious metals, a full set of weapons, horse equipment and tableware with glass goblets and richly decorated drinking horns. This despite the fact that they were Christians. The archaeological material from Merovingian-era Europe is very rich due to the burial custom, and contains objects ornamented in Style II. The influence from the Merovingian realm on all Germanic kingdoms and petty kingdoms in Scandinavia has been strong.

For a long time there was uncertainty about where the new art style originated and how it spread so quickly. The Lombards in Italy were long given credit for having created Style II as a development of the Migration Period animal style and the Mediterranean region’s interlace motifs. But gradually one has come to the conclusion that the style shift must have happened first in Scandinavia, either in Denmark or in the Swedish Mälaren region. Both regions had political, religious and economic prerequisites and strong royal lineages with contacts to both the Frankish and the Anglo-Saxon.

Based on the archaeological material, three early Nordic kingdoms seem to have crystallized in this period, which in Danish is called the Later Germanic Iron Age, in Swedish the Vendel Period and in Norway and Finland the Merovingian Period, namely Denmark with Skåne, Småland, Öland and Blekinge, the Mälaren region with its centre in Gamla Uppsala, and Gotland. The areas are to be understood as early kingdoms, where military operations under strong leaders constantly changed their size. The Migration Period’s many tribe-based chieftainships were during the Migration Period and the early part of the Merovingian Period replaced by larger territories with estates where the production of food, iron, textiles etc. was based on surplus. The kings had their sworn “stewards” who took care of tribute collection etc. in each region. Agriculture was reorganized from an extensive use of the land to an intensive one with greater use of fertilizer. What can be called outfield areas were exploited to an ever greater degree. That the reorganization was marked by violence is beyond doubt. The members of the warrior elite were the actual power holders. Already around 520 there is written information that the king of the Danes, Hygelac, attacked the Franks at the mouth of the Rhine, and about the Heruli’s migration from Jylland to Götaland. Danes and Svear were not tribal designations at this time but designations for confederations of several old tribes under one ruling lineage of Svear or Danes. The struggle for resources and territories was brutal and prolonged throughout the European continent, and the new power holders demonstrated their power with, among other things, the new animal style on weapons and women’s jewellery. Under Byzantine influence, the Franks had made verotterie cloisonné with blood-red, faceted garnets in gold cells with waffled backing into an exclusive art that quickly spread in the North. Sword pommels, dress brooches, mounts and details on belt buckles were objects that were adorned with cloisonné in intricate patterns. Moreover, there were limited quantities of gold in circulation, and therefore gifts of gold with garnets had great symbolic significance in the rulers’ eternal struggle to retain power over resources and people.

The Warrior Aristocracy

The new society can be characterized as martial in contrast to the centuries earlier where military organization was based on the various tribes. The martial society was based on a retinue where the leader had almost unlimited power and where weapon equipment was mass-produced and was the same on the continent and in Scandinavia. A martial society was perhaps not more violent than before, but it was so well-organized and well-equipped militarily that it could not be easily attacked.

The burial custom in the North was generally based on cremation of the deceased where the fire consumed most things, and the number of graves from the 7th century in the North is relatively low. The quantity of stray finds from the Merovingian Period has, however, increased enormously after metal detectors came into the picture, and the many jewellery objects that have been found give, among other things, a picture of how animal ornamentation was used. On Bornholm, richly equipped weapon graves in chambers with horses after Frankish influence give a picture of the new elite. But if we want to know how the Frankish-influenced Scandinavian warrior elite appeared in the North of that time, it is to the Uppsvensk boat burial grounds we must turn. Here the burial grounds also show that the warriors’ leaders were mounted. They paraded sitting in decorated saddles on their horses whose harnesses were equipped with mounts of gilded bronze with ornamentation in Style II. On their heads they wore splendid helmets, and the weapon equipment consisted of swords, lances, bows and arrows and shields.

The four burial grounds Tuna (in Alsike), Ulltuna, Valsgärde and Vendel were established along the waterway that went from Mälaren into the Fyrisån and further northwestward on the Vendelån. The sea level was several metres higher than today, and Mälaren was an inlet of the Baltic Sea. Many rivers were important traffic routes for boats in the summer half of the year and for traffic with sleds and skis in the winter half of the year. Therefore it seems so self-evident that the helmeted warriors (and those who did not have helmets) were buried in a clinker-built boat surrounded by their riding horses. Several of the horses were also equipped with ice-crampons for travel on ice-covered rivers and lakes. All burial grounds were used through many generations from the early Iron Age to the Middle Ages. The burial custom included both cremation and inhumation, but the warrior graves covering the period from ca. 550-800 are all unburned. There were 14 graves in Vendel, but there have certainly been more, and they lay close together south of the church. Seven graves were boat graves, and the boats varied from seven to ten metres in length. Four of the graves contained a splendid helmet or remains of one. Since both the burial grounds in Ulltuna and Tuna had been subject to destruction, it was fortunate that the burial ground in Valsgärde, only 3 km north of Gamla Uppsala, was intact and could be fully investigated by archaeologists. As in Vendel, the burial ground had been used for many hundreds of years; four boat graves cover approximately the period 650-750 and 11 are from the Viking Age. The ornamentation on the boat graves’ splendid objects forms the basis for a division of Style II into several chronological groups from A to E.

Grave 6 in Valsgärde represents a kind of average of the boat graves. It contained a 10-metre-long boat of spruce and had room for four or five pairs of rowers. Aft in the boat the dead warrior had been placed on down-filled pillows and mattresses. On his left side he had two swords and a cleaver as well as two glass goblets from the Rhine region, and on his right side yet another cleaver. Everything was then covered with several layers of blankets and mats of birch bark, possibly a kind of tent or canopy. Two shields stood supported against the port railing and one on the starboard side. A bit from the deceased’s feet lay two bridles for horses with mounts and bits and two bundles of arrows, a tool chest and various heavier iron implements. On the bottom of the boat toward the bow lay the helmet. In a row diagonally across the boat lay two belts with mounts, a spearhead, a glass bowl, a wooden game board with game pieces, a bandolier. In the bow lay various cooking equipment of iron as well as provisions in the form of hams etc. Inside the boat lay a horse and three dogs and outside another horse and an ox.

The men in the boat graves were not equipped with jewellery of precious metals or garnets in cloisonné, and all the decorated mounts are of gilded bronze. Two of the helmets and two of the swords do have inlays of garnets, but arm or neck rings of gold do not occur. The helmets are the most eye-catching of the weapon equipment. They are so-called Nordic crested helmets made of iron bands and iron plates. They have a characteristic crest over the crown either in the form of an ornamented band with animal ornamentation or as a high crest ending in an animal head at front and back. The helmets are decorated with images in pressed sheet metal with a range of motifs where warriors in procession, mounted warriors in combat, weapon dancers and animal tamers are the most common motifs. The eagle and the wild boar are found on the helmets’ crests and signal the warrior’s fighting spirit and courage while these animals are also connected to Odin and Freyr. The most elaborate of the Nordic helmets was found in the Anglian king Rædwald’s grave at Sutton Hoo in England from the early 7th century, and it shows with all clarity that the helmet was preferably a sign of rank and dignity. The Frankish kings’ retinue leaders received their helmets from the king as a sign of their rank, and the helmets bore Christian symbols. Perhaps therefore the image programmes on the Nordic crested helmets with their pagan content can be interpreted as a reaction to the Christian message. The helmets were held in high honour, and most, judging by the wear, must have been quite old when they came into the grave, i.e., they were passed down as heirlooms together with the rank of leader of the king’s retinue. The helmets were therefore not placed near the deceased, but in front of him at the bottom of the boat.

The Swedish boat graves represent a period when the royal lineage based in Gamla Uppsala was strongly influenced by the Franks. The Svea kings themselves were cremated and buried in enormous burial mounds, but the retinue was according to Frankish custom buried unburned with their parade and combat equipment in their own burial grounds. The retinue leaders, who themselves were of high rank, swore an oath of loyalty to the king and received as a pledge of this relationship a prestigious gift, often a ring-sword. The warriors in the retinue had war as their métier. They had a certain lifestyle and trained for combat from when, as quite young boys, they were admitted into the fellowship; their rituals were primarily connected to Odin, the great war god. The Old English heroic poem about Beowulf deals precisely with life in the king’s great hall, about great dangers that the good hero overcomes and about his death and burial. Beowulf means bee-wolf, in other words: bear. The bear was perhaps the hero’s follower animal, and his bear-self was so strong and fearless that he could kill the monster Grendel and his dangerous mother.

The Queen in the Hall

Some may perhaps think that these warriors must have had mothers, sisters, wives and concubines and wonder whether they are present in the archaeological material from the age of heroes and warriors. The mistresses with their keys and abilities to see surely still existed, but their role had possibly changed. On the other hand, the cremation burial custom, which appeals less strongly to researchers, was predominant. In the Beowulf poem there is a woman, the queen of the Danes Wealtheow, who gives a picture of the most powerful mistress’s role when the warriors are seated on the benches in King Hrothgar’s hall Heorot:

“So the laughter started, the din got louder, and the crowd was happy. Wealtheow came in, Hrothgar’s queen, observing the courtesies.

Adorned in her gold, she graciously saluted the men in the hall, then handed the cup first to Hrothgar, their homelands guardian, urging him to drink deep and enjoy it, because he was dear to them. And he drank it down like the warlord he was, with festive cheers” (Translation Seamus Heaney).

Inside the hall at the ritual feasts where sacrifice to the gods took place, the mistress played the role of ceremony leader. In the epic she gives the king to drink first, praises him as good and generous and then passes the goblet with mead to each of the guests and last to Beowulf. Her role was naturally also to manage the household, to see that there was enough food and drink for the feasts and to take care of what the guests brought as gifts. But she also gave the king advice about gifts to guests as well as to warriors and about the ranking of warriors on the long benches when there was a feast. The one with the lowest status sat down by the door where the draught was worst.

Much of the archaeological material from this period is precisely women’s jewellery. Animal brooches in the form of a horse are unusual, but serpents coiled in figure-eights and S-shaped serpents with a head at each end have been common. The small Gotlandic relief button brooches always have powerful bird of prey heads at the bottom of the foot. The eagle that exists as decorative mounts on the shield boards in Valsgärde grave 7 and in the royal grave from Sutton Hoo exists as dress brooches for women especially in the Mälaren area. Thereby the symbols of the retinue are also connected to women since the eagle is a symbol for Odin. There is a bronze belt buckle found on Sjælland where a male head en face is flanked on each side by three profile heads—eagle, wild boar and wolf—and the same motif is found on a shield handle in Valsgärde grave 7. This three-animal sign is rare in the North, but common on the continent. It may symbolize Odin and his shamanic helper spirits, but it may also have been created under the influence of Christianity’s trinity or early Christian representations of Christ surrounded by the animal symbols of three of the evangelists John, Mark and Luke: the eagle, the lion and the ox.

Style II’s animal figures may have had an apotropaic, i.e., evil-averting, effect when found on women’s jewellery but have at the same time shown which social stratum the women belonged to. They have also given other signals to the surroundings that are related to the Migration Period relief brooches. The elegantly curved animal figures in even rhythm give the impression of a different and more controlled aesthetic than before. But what kind of animals are included in the motifs is almost impossible to reveal. It seems as if wolf-like animals and eagles with powerful, curved beaks gradually give way to more horse-like animals. The horse’s role both as a sacred animal and as an important factor in battle and as a means of transport for the elite stratum of society increases markedly between the 6th and 8th centuries.

Large Estates and Proto-Towns

The social changes in the 6th-7th centuries are also evident in the archaeological structures in the landscape—villages and large farms. The Gudme area on eastern Fyn with its trading and craft site Lundeborg had its heyday between the 4th and 6th centuries, but it continued as a large estate until the Middle Ages. The Sorte Muld area on Bornholm, on the other hand, had its heyday between the 6th and 8th centuries. Uppåkra near Lund in Skåne between the 5th-10th centuries, while Helgö in Mälaren seems to have been the North’s largest metalworking area between the 4th and 6th centuries. Its sacral significance, however, did not decline until the Viking Age. This type of settlement can perhaps be called large estates with cultic centre functions. Such estates probably did not have income from their own farming, but from other farms that had a dependent relationship to the estate owner/petty king and his family, and from collection of tribute in the form of various agricultural or hunting products, craft products and prestige goods but also gifts. Several such estates were established after the Migration Period such as Tissø with a rich archaeological material from the 7th-10th centuries and Lejre with material covering the same period, both on Sjælland. During the 8th-9th centuries a change seems to occur from a system based on tribute to an estate system based on one’s own farming in southern Scandinavia, probably in connection with simultaneous changes in political power relations. The large estates, which were not many, had large hall buildings and a circle of smaller farms connected to the main farm. In such enormous hall buildings the prince gathered his allies, kinsmen, friends and warriors for grand cultic feasts. There the gods received their sacrifices and the prince tribute from the skald while the sweet mead and the steaming horse meat got the warriors to promise many a future great deed. Large estates show that already in the 8th century in the North there is a landowning aristocracy that increases its power because the king’s power is not strong enough. A number of smaller trading or market places are established at this time, probably by the large estate owners. Only in alliance with the church and its inherited structures could royal power be strengthened and lay the foundation for the national kingdoms.

In the 8th century the first towns, or perhaps rather proto-towns, are established in Scandinavia, namely Ribe in western Jylland, Hedeby in Schleswig, Åhus in Skåne, Birka on Björkö in Mälaren and Skiringsal in Vestfold. They are probably established on royal land and are characterized by a common plan with narrow market plots running parallel up from the beach. On each plot a booth was set up or a house erected for a craftsman—a bead maker, a bronze caster, a comb maker, a weaver. It is unclear whether the settlement was year-round in the first period or whether it was based on activity only in the summer half of the year.

On the continent, the last of the long-haired Merovingians was in 751 succeeded by Pepin the Short, who was crowned king of the Franks with the pope’s blessing, the first of the Arnulfing or Carolingian dynasty. His sons Charles and Carloman co-ruled for three years, but from 771-814 Charles the Great, Carolus Magnus, ruled alone. He allied himself with the Roman church, and was crowned emperor in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome on Christmas Day 800 with the pope’s blessing. During the Carolingian realm’s greatest extent and flourishing period, the influence on the Scandinavian areas was unequally strong. From the episcopal see in Hamburg, missionaries were sent out, first to Friesland and later to the North to convert people to the true faith. It was the kings and aristocracy who first had to be won for Christianity, then the rest of the people would follow. About the Christianization attempts in Hedeby and Birka there exists a written contemporary source, Bishop Rimbert’s biography of his predecessor and teacher Ansgar, which gives glimpses of the Frankish missionaries’ life among “the wild” Scandinavians.

The Ship

The population of the North in the Iron Age lived along the coast, by navigable rivers and larger lakes, and boat building must early have become a profession where there was plenty of forest. Remarkably, it appears that in the North there was a common boat-building tradition with clinker-built hulls. Regional differences certainly existed, but they are difficult to distinguish in the sparse archaeological material. Until the Viking Age, ships were rowed.

The 23-metre-long rowing ship from Nydam bog from the 5th century is a good example. Not until around 800 AD do we have tangible evidence that ships were built with a proper keel, which is the prerequisite for the vessel to be able to carry a mast with sail, namely the Oseberg ship. But on Gotlandic picture stones from the 6th and 7th centuries there are ships carrying sails, and on picture stones from the 8th century ships with masts and sails and complicated rigging are seen. Moreover, there is a long runic inscription from the early 7th century from Eggja in Sogn that mentions both rowlocks and mast. Here, then, there is a contradiction between the archaeological material and documents in images and writing.

A unique, small dress brooch from Lillevang on Bornholm shows a Viking ship with shields fastened at the gunwale and with a mast. At the top of the mast is an animal mask en face—a small bear-like face. The ship’s prow terminates with a bird of prey head with curved neck. The stern terminates in the same way with a profile animal head.

The animal heads in the ship’s stems were meant to reinforce the impression of the animal- or bird-like quality of the ship. King Olav Tryggvason’s ship was named, for example, Ormen Lange (The Long Serpent), and we must imagine that the prow was adorned with a serpent head and the stern with a coiled serpent body. The Oseberg queen’s ship was built around the year 800, and the ship’s prow has a grimacing head that perhaps was meant to frighten the land spirits, the spirits that protected a land area. In the Icelandic Landnámabók it says that the Icelandic law from before the land became Christian in 999 had a provision that one must not sail toward land with gaping heads and open jaws so that the land spirits were frightened. The Viking ships had painted details, and the shields along the gunwale could be a motley collection or have the same colour and decoration. On the Gotlandic picture stones the Viking ships’ sails are striped or checked, which possibly had no basis in reality. But at the masthead or at the bow, at least the late Viking ships had shiny weathervanes of bronze with rattling plates or colourful ribbons fastened in small holes along the vane’s outer edge. There is a very famous illustration made with a knife on a knotty stick from Bryggen in Bergen of a Viking ship fleet with animal heads or vanes at the prow (cf. drawing p. 38).

Such vanes must have been quite common in the Viking Age since they were also cast in miniature versions in bronze. If one turns the image of the miniature vane from Rangsby in Saltvik parish on Åland, the vane shape becomes clear, and the small bear-like face shows a clear kinship with the Lillevang brooch’s masthead. They belong to a gripping beast in so-called Borre style, named after some gilded bronze mounts from the large ship burial at Borre in Vestfold from ca. 900. Miniature vanes of this type are known from three find sites, Åland, Birka in Mälaren and Menzlin in Ostvorpommern, while a younger type with an animal head at the outer end exists from such varied localities as Novosjolki near Smolensk in Russia, Bandlunde on Gotland and Lovö in Mälaren. Two weathered miniature vanes from a damaged cremation grave in Dalarna in Sweden bring the number up to eight, which suggests that it is a rare, small object. How it was used is uncertain. Jan Peder Lamm has suggested that they stood on small ship models that prominent people in the Viking Age had in their halls! Of the large ship vanes from the late Viking Age, which were called veðrviti, there are actually three well-preserved examples because they ended their days as weathervanes on churches. These are Söderala church in Hälsingland, Heggen church in Buskerud and Kållunge church on Gotland, where the vane sat on the church spire until 1930. An older drawing shows that the vanes were originally not placed on the church spire as weather cocks but that they stood at an angle on the church ridge itself as on the longships. The connection between ships and churches in the Middle Ages is that the naval levy ships’ sails and equipment were stored in church lofts, and it is probably the large naval levy ships with their vanes that are “depicted” on the knotty stick from Bryggen in Bergen.

The Gripping Beast

Viking Age art is varied and in many ways different from the preceding centuries except that the animal motif remains strong. Several art styles appear simultaneously, and it is clear that the second half of the 700s represents a period of renewal with experimentation with new forms and representations. The narrow, band-shaped animal figures in symmetrically constructed, controlled image structures that characterize the last of the Vendel styles, Style D, are broken in western and southwestern Scandinavia by a kind of mixed style (Style F). Some have called it “missionary style” because it is influenced by continental art traditions connected to Anglo-continental style and is associated with the strong missionary activity that took place from the second half of the 700s to the first half of the 800s. In 826, for example, the first missionary, the Benedictine monk Ansgar, came to Hedeby, and three years later he made his way with great effort and difficulty to Birka in Mälaren. There is also a Style III/E that particularly occurs on Gotland at the end of the Vendel Period and continues to be produced in the early Viking Age on large, baroque relief button brooches where each part is cast as a hollow box. The boxes’ upper surfaces are adorned with set garnets, gold sheet and high knobs. Many of the relief button brooches are masterpieces decorated with animal ornamentation and gilding on all surfaces.

A new motif of a completely different character arrives—the lively gripping beast. It has received its name because its four feet grip its surroundings whether they consist of a frame, another animal or its own limbs. Its head is depicted en face with large, staring eyes and often with a tuft of hair. It sometimes grips its own mouth corners so that the teeth are bared. The gripping beast introduces the Viking Age where art changes character under the influence of Christian, Oriental and Irish motifs in metalwork and book illumination. Plant motifs such as acanthus and vine scrolls with birds and animals are conveyed to Nordic metalworkers via the Vikings’ raids on churches and monasteries where great art treasures were plundered, but also via Frankish and Anglo-Saxon missionaries who brought with them their liturgical books and objects. Gift exchange between Nordic kings and chieftains for political purposes also led to new and distinctive art objects coming into environments where they were copied and given a different function. One of the classic examples is the trefoil brooch, a women’s ornament for holding together a cape or cloak at the chest. Originally the trefoil brooch was a strap distributor for a Frankish sword suspension and was decorated with plant ornamentation. But Viking Age weapon-bearing men carried the sword in the belt without a bandolier and gave their women the Frankish strap distributor converted into a pendant or brooch. The form was quickly adopted by jewellery smiths and equipped with Nordic ornamentation, something it was well suited for.

The three earliest style groups in the Viking Age are called Broa, Berdal and Borre after find sites for important finds, and the groups are distinguished on the basis of the animal motifs’ formal changes. But on one and the same object several styles can be represented, which shows that they overlap each other in time. The gripping beast gradually developed into a small teddy bear-like creature, “the Borre animal,” and three such gripping beasts are a common motif on the trefoil brooches. The gripping beast motif became very popular, and the Norsemen took it with them to the British Isles, where in recent years many good examples have emerged thanks to metal detectors. Two Norwegian finds show that the gripping beast motif could also tempt the handy into sculpture in the round. The figures, two bears (?) holding each other and a fantasy animal with bared teeth, are made of jet, an amorphous coal that is only found in England and was popular for jewellery, especially arm rings. Where the gripping beast originated and what the inspiration for such a deviant animal motif was has not been clarified. But that it is a foreign element in Nordic art everyone agrees, and possibly the inspiration comes from England or from so-called Anglo-continental style—the missionary style. In its early form the gripping beast is strongly asymmetrical and is often seen on keys, where it seems to tumble inside the key head, but also on oval dress brooches. In the later Borre style the gripping beast is tamed. It gets a teddy bear-like head with ears and a body that is arranged symmetrically about a spine/central axis. But what does the gripping beast symbolize? No one knows, but its apotropaic significance should be certain.

Women Create Clothes, Men Cast Jewellery

Women’s dress in the Viking Age was quite stereotypical, but its fixed jewellery inventory gave goldsmiths opportunities to excel in the changing ornamental styles. Innermost the woman wore a long shift of linen that could be pleated and was closed at the neck with a small, round brooch. Over this she wore a pinafore dress and outermost a cape or cloak. The festive dress, which she was clad in for her last journey, did not include a belt. But in everyday life she may have had a textile belt for a knife and keys just like the Migration Period mistresses. The pinafore dress’s straps consisted of two loops of fabric, two long ones going from the back over the shoulders and two short ones on the front. The loops were fastened together with an oval, bowl-shaped bronze brooch on each side of the chest, and it is especially these brooches that were equipped with rich ornamentation. The oval brooch is already created in the 8th century and resembles a curled-up primordial animal, a kind of trilobite, seen from above. But the typical oval dress brooch was evidently created by a craftsman in Ribe at the end of the 8th century and is called a Berdal brooch after a find site in western Norway. Therefore the early Viking Age animal style with gripping beasts was previously called the Berdal style. Throughout the Viking Age the oval brooches were mass-produced in increasingly larger and wider versions and also equipped with a rim at the bottom. The series of oval brooches from the 900s have double shells—a smooth, gilded lower shell and an upper shell in openwork pattern divided into fields by means of ridges. The ridges were decorated either with white metal and niello or with applied, braided silver cords. Where the ridges crossed each other, the goldsmiths placed openwork knobs of gilded silver or bronze so that the entire surface gave a lively, plastic impression. The same plasticity also characterizes the Gotlandic box-shaped brooches and certain equal-armed brooches. Between the oval brooches the women hung rows of colourful beads of glass, amber, carnelian and small amulets of silver. In the later Viking Age it was common with a ring fastened to the rim where a knife, a key or other items could be attached. When Viking Age women’s dress went out of fashion in the 10th-11th centuries in Scandinavia, the Finnish and Baltic jewellery smiths created a narrower, pointed-oval variant with its own ornamentation.

The Gotlandic women wore a similar dress with a pinafore but without oval brooches. Here they were replaced by relatively small, animal-head-shaped bronze brooches. The heads look like a mixture of bear and pig with distinct snout and small, round ears. There is no indication of eyes. On the back is a bottom plate for attaching a pin and pin catch. The front of the brooches is divided into fields by means of ridges and covered with animal ornamentation or just dots. Between the animal-head brooches the women hung several chains of bronze rings fastened to chain plates shaped like masks. Such went out of fashion in the later Viking Age, but bronze chains fastened to round or pointed-oval dress brooches lived on as an important part of Finnish women’s dress in the late Viking Age and early Middle Ages. Typical for Gotland are pendants in the form of fish heads in bronze that were strung next to each other in long chains and fastened to the animal-head-shaped brooches. At the end of the Viking Age it happened that two fish heads were fastened together by means of rivets and made into a dress brooch with a pin on the back. The round, box-shaped brooches that held together the outer garment in front were also something entirely unique to Gotland. In the rest of the North, women in the early Viking Age used an equal-armed brooch or a trefoil brooch and later round, openwork brooches with a representation of a profile bird of prey or shaped like an animal figure seen from above. Women’s dress with paired brooches seems to have been connected with a female role that was not possible after Christianity gained a foothold in Scandinavia. The animal ornamentation on the dress’s oval and other brooches was probably connected with the rituals that women were responsible for and that belonged to the inherited beliefs where seid was an important part.

Viking Age weapon-bearing men wore few ornaments. A ring brooch or ring pin of silver or bronze to fasten the cloak over the shoulder was the most important. A small brooch closed the tunic at the neck, and the waist belt could be equipped with a belt buckle and mounts of bronze. The sword in its decorated scabbard was the man’s foremost status object. If the blade was pattern-welded and pommel and guards adorned with ornamentation in precious metals or copper, it gave a clearer message about the man’s status than any ornament. The large ring pins of silver are very rare in grave finds, but all the more common in the silver hoards from the Viking Age both in the North and in the British Isles. There men wore the ring brooch with the pin up, and it gradually assumed such a length that it became dangerous to those around.

The Jelling Stone

The late art styles of the Viking Age are connected to typically aristocratic environments and are named after the find site for the most characteristic objects, Jelling, Mammen, Ringerike and Urnes. In the three latter, the motifs are mainly large, clearly drawn four-legged animals and large birds. The Jelling stone’s large, lion-like animal in combat with the serpent is not drawn in the Jelling style but in the Mammen style. The origin of the motif of the great animal has been sought in continental and Anglo-Saxon art, but without solving the problem. Both Old Norse and Christian myths may underlie the representation and reflect the transitional period in which the art styles emerged.

“King Harald commanded this monument to be made in memory of Gorm his father and Thyra his mother. The Harald who won for himself all Denmark and Norway and made the Danes Christian.” This is the 2.4-metre-high Jelling stone’s short and pregnant message in runes. In addition comes the representation of Christ as the victorious ruler bound by serpent-like interlace on one of the stone’s image sides with the text “and made the Danes Christian” below. The large four-legged animal with the serpent is found on the other image side. King Harald Bluetooth stood with one leg in the old world with its beliefs and with one in the new world with Christianity. This is reflected in the entire composition of this dynastic complex with the two enormous mounds, with King Gorm’s memorial stone for his wife Thyra, Harald Bluetooth’s monument and the church. The mounds were investigated in 1820 and 1941. The northern one contained a plundered chamber grave and the other turned out not to be a burial mound. Both are built over a 170-metre-long ship setting. Under the 12th-century church, which lies between the mounds, the traces of three older churches were found at the end of the 1970s, of which the oldest is probably the one the king had built when he converted to Christianity around 960. In the church a chamber grave was found with the remains of two persons who are probably the earthly remains of Thyra and Gorm and whom their son Harald moved to a Christian grave after his own conversion. In Nordhøjen, among other things, a large wax candle and a tiny silver goblet on a foot were found, partly gilded and with a decoration that has given its name to the period’s art style, the Jelling style. On the Jelling cup, which is probably a Christian travelling chalice, two band-shaped animal figures with raised forelegs are seen on each side of a basket-like figure with two fan-shaped acanthus leaves.

The Jelling style, which in its early phase is two-dimensional and surface-covering, has as its main motif a band-shaped, profile animal in S-form with a tail. It has a head with a large eye, open mouth with long tongue and sometimes a fang. From the head often extends a nape tuft, and the body is cross-striped and/or beaded. The kinship with Style III is clear, and it is possible that the style originated in the Scandinavian milieu in York. Since this animal style is also attested in the ship burial from Gokstad in Vestfold, one has been able to date the Jelling style’s period using dendrochronology to between the end of the 9th century and the middle of the 10th century. It has evidently had a connection to royal circles and to the aristocracy.

Mammen

Bjerringhøj, a relatively small burial mound in Mammen south of Viborg, was plundered in 1868. It covered a chamber 3 m x 1.9 m with walls of standing, axe-hewn oak planks and 6 roof-bearing posts. In a plank coffin lay a man and probably a woman in splendid clothes with embroidery and gold-woven bands. The grave goods that could be reconstructed consisted of an iron axe entirely covered with ornamentation inlaid in silver, at least ten spangles of gold foil sewn onto the clothing, textile remains as well as two textile armbands. In addition there were fur remains of marmot, an undecorated iron axe, two wooden buckets, a bronze cauldron, a game board (?) and a 3.7 kg large wax candle. The burial took place in the year 970/971, when Denmark was officially Christianized, but apart from the wax candle the grave shows no particularly Christian features. The splendid axe has a profile bird figure on one side of the blade and a stylized tree on the other. The tree can be interpreted both as the ash tree Yggdrasil and as the Christian Tree of Life, and the bird as both the rooster Gullinkambi that crows to warn the Æsir that the destruction of the world, Ragnarök, is near or as the Phoenix, a Christian symbol for Christ and the resurrection. It is likely that the couple in Bjerringhøj belonged to Harald Bluetooth’s circle.

The Great Shall Be Known by Their Vehicle

In a gravel pit near Mammen church, a craftsman’s hoard wrapped in linen cloth was found in 1871. It contained pressed sheet metal with human masks, a bronze patrix for a rectangular mount, a lock mount of bronze sheet, fragments of at least two bronze vessels as well as ornamented edge and end mounts for two mane-poles (mankestoler) of wood. The mounts are of gilded bronze and filled to bursting point with band-shaped animal figures, serpents and a small female figure with a plant in her hand (Volume 1, 39), all in the Jelling style with elements of the Mammen style. The end mounts are shaped as plastic animal heads with open jaws, entwined by serpents and with a plastic animal figure in the open jaws.

Splendid mane-poles like these from Mammen are known only from Denmark—from Elstrup on Als, Møllemosegård near Nybølle on Fyn and the most distinguished of all—a pair from a plundered burial mound in Søllested on Fyn. They are connected with wagons, roads and a social stratum that stood above ordinary people and had themselves transported on special occasions. There are four-wheeled wagons in Jylland from the Pre-Roman Iron Age, including the elegant wagons from Dejbjerg præstegårdsmose southeast of Ringkøbing. But it is uncertain whether they were used for secular purposes. Tacitus tells in his book about the Germanic peoples from 98 AD about the Germanic goddess Nerthus whose image in spring was transported around in a wagon drawn by cows. But for the Danish late Viking Age wagons, the horse was the draught animal. Horse and wagon were not as uncommon as the splendid mane-poles suggest, but elsewhere in Scandinavia the mane-poles were simpler. They were of wood, but at the top sat an ornamented bronze mount with room for a rein in each of its holes. In the ship burial from Oseberg in Vestfold there was a wagon with rich carvings. The wagon consists of a loose wagon body on a wheel assembly of solid wheels with short spokes into the wheel hub. This wagon cannot turn, but can only roll straight ahead with the help of two draught animals and has thus probably not been an ordinary vehicle. The Oseberg woman’s equipment also includes a long picture tapestry, a rail with representations of, among other things, cultic processions with both covered wagons drawn by horses and wagons with passengers. Four animal-head posts of wood with rich decoration in chip-carving should be mentioned in this context. They are both in form and motif related to the end mounts on the Danish splendid mane-poles and, like them, were surely connected to particular rituals involving processions with wagons. Wagons drawn by horses are depicted on one of the Gotlandic burial cists, such as were used only for women. Both grave finds and literary references give the impression that the noble woman’s means of transport in the Viking Age was the horse-drawn wagon while the man rode. But that horse and wagon were used in very specific contexts is also indicated by the Søllested mane-poles.

A mane-pole (Old Norse hyfri) was placed on the horse’s back just behind the mane and functioned as a holder for the reins. With the help of a breast strap and a belly band, it bore the weight of the harness and the wagon shafts. The two mane-poles from Søllested belonged to a wagon drawn by two horses. They are 36.5 cm long, semicircular with a flat underside. At each end sits an animal head of gilded bronze with round, staring eyes, large, round ears and an open jaw full of teeth. Every single part of the mane-pole’s surface is filled with animal ornamentation both as flat decoration and as sculpture in the round, and niello, inlay with blue glass and silver foil have been used to highlight details. The mane-pole’s long sides are decorated with male masks holding onto their moustaches with small hands, and the mane-pole’s comb is covered with gilded bronze mounts with rich ornamentation of profile animal figures and birds of prey. The comb is crowned by a curved top piece with an openwork ornament almost in the round. Its central part has one hole for both reins, and deep wear marks show that two reins passed through each of the mane-poles. Above the rein hole is seen a curved section where two small figures, evidently a man and a woman, sit facing each other. They are reminiscent of gold foil figures. The representation on each side seems to be illustrations of a narrative about the destruction of the world where dragon-like fantasy animals and serpents with bird of prey heads bite and peck. The mane-poles’ combined ornamentation evidently constitutes an image programme where the curved middle section is central. It has been interpreted as a hall where two of the gods sit. Some have wanted to see Freyja and Odin looking out over the world from Odin’s high seat. Others follow the Norwegian scholar Gro Steinsland who has interpreted the gold foil figures with couples, and believe that the image symbolizes hieros gamos—the union of a male deity and a giantess in a sacred marriage. It may be connected to the myth of Freyr and Gerd, which is told in the Eddic poem Skírnismál, or to a myth about Odin and Skadi that the skald Eyvindr Skáldaspillir mentions in his poem Háleygjatal. The god becomes in such a context an archetype for the mighty and potent prince and the giantess represents the land area that the prince is to take possession of. If one looks at the Søllested mane-poles from such an interpretation, they may have functioned in a ritual bridal procession. The wear from the reins may indicate that the bridal procession was repeated many times, perhaps as part of seasonal rites. The battling predators, serpents and birds of prey bring thoughts to chaos and destruction. Through the sacred marriage the forces of destruction are overcome and the earth becomes fertile again. The mane-poles came into the grave in the second half of the 10th century in an aristocratic milieu that must have been connected to the Christian royal seat at Jelling. The old beliefs and rituals perhaps went into the grave with the mane-poles.

The Last Animal Styles

The Ringerike style (ca. 975-1050) also belongs to the emergence of the Danish North Sea Empire and is related to both the Jelling style and the Mammen style. Here too it concerns large, heraldic lion animals, birds and serpents. The serpents’ bodies form loops, and from these plants and tendrils grow. A good example is the weathervanes from the great Viking ships. The last of the Viking Age animal styles is the Urnes style, named after the north portal of Urnes stave church in Sogn. Here we encounter a soft and supple representation of a long-legged animal that “fights” with a serpent. The Urnes style is also called the runestone style because it is so well represented on the many Swedish runestones that were raised in the period from ca. 1050-1150. It became popular also in the British Isles, and the main motif with the long-legged animal and the serpent is found on a large number of silver dress brooches. On Gotland, where the custom of burying people fully dressed with jewellery and smaller possessions lasted several generations longer than elsewhere in Scandinavia, there is a rich selection of objects ornamented in the Urnes style. It is notable that on the back of box-shaped splendid brooches one finds the figure-eight-shaped serpent interlaces. That part of the brooch faced toward the woman’s body, and it therefore seems reasonable to assume that the serpents had a special, perhaps apotropaic function.

Iron Age people had a close relationship with the animal and the bird as meaning-bearing motifs in art. Between the arrhythmic Style I with its fragmented figures and the Urnes style’s graceful lines lie more than 600 years. The motifs were connected to beliefs and rituals that slowly changed under influence from the royal and princely lineages on the continent. Resistance to Christian thought seems to have been strongest in the Migration Period and in the Viking Age, but Christian myths and motifs came in gradually nonetheless. The Vikings’ attacks on monasteries and churches in Western Europe can also be seen as an attack on Christianity with its different view of humans. The kin group was the centre of Iron Age people’s existence. Only as a member of a kin group were they human. Through feud, revenge and compensation, conflicts between kin groups were settled, and through shamanistic rituals the seid-skilled woman or man attempted to make contact with the gods and see into the future. The beliefs about the human’s alter ego in the form of an animal, about the free-soul that could be sent off on missions in the shape of a bird, a large animal or a serpent, and about the human’s evil intent in the form of wolves influenced their lives in all its aspects and was the foundation for their art.

Battle-Wolf, Sword-Wolf’s descendant
carved these runes
in memory of Army-Wolf.

Battle-Wolf set (rune)staves three: cattle, cattle, cattle.

The secret of mighty runes
I hid here
powerful runes.
He who breaks this memorial
shall be eternally plagued by ergi.
Treacherous death shall strike him.
I prophesy destruction.

Inscriptions from the 7th century on three runestones from Blekinge: Istaby, Gummarp and Bjørketorp. Translation R.B.F. Jansson 1984.

Abbreviations

NM: Nationalmuseet, København.
HAM: Haderslev Museum.
KM: Finlands Nationalmuseum, Helsingfors.
SHM: Statens Historiska Museum, Stockholm.
GF: Gotlands Fornsal, Visby.
UMF: Universitetets Museum för nordiska fornsaker, Uppsala.
VGDE: Valsgärde.
C: Universitetets Kulturhistoriske Museer, Oldsaksamlingen, Oslo.
B: Bergen Museum, Universitetet i Bergen.
S: Arkeologisk Museum i Stavanger.
T: Vitenskapsmuseet, Universitetet i Trondheim.

Chronological List

Pre-Roman Iron Age: ca. 500 BC – Birth of Christ
Early Roman Period: ca. Birth of Christ – ca. 200 AD
Late Roman Period: ca. 200 AD – 400 AD
Migration Period/Early Germanic Iron Age: ca. 400 AD – ca. 550 AD
Merovingian Period/Vendel Period/Late Germanic Iron Age: ca. 550 AD – ca. 800 AD
Viking Age: ca. 800 AD – 1050 AD

To the Images

  1. Arm ring of silver. Diam. 8 cm. Single find. Orupgård, Idestrup s., Falster Sdr. h., Maribo amt. NM Dnf 14/48.

  2. Twisted gold neck ring with pear-shaped clasp. Weight 14.25 g. Hoard find. 3rd century AD. Erikstrup, Østofte s., Fuglse h., Maribo amt. NM 19250. (Outermost) Twisted neck ring of gold. Weight 99 g. Single find together with parts of skeleton. Pre-Roman Iron Age. Lavindsgårdsmose, Rønninge s., Åsum h., Odense amt. NM Dnf 4/47.

  3. Finger ring of gold with set Roman gemstone of blue glass. Male grave. 3rd century AD. Hågerup, Brahetrolleborg s., Sallinge h., Svendborg amt. NM C 23248-59.

  4. Serpent-head or raven-head finger ring of gold. H. 4.2 cm, inner diam. 2 cm. Weight 26.2 g. Male grave. 3rd century AD. Himlingøje, Himlingøje s., Bjæverskov h., Præstø amt. NM C 29979.

  5. Strap distributor of bronze. L. of each link ca. 8.5 cm. Single find. Bregentved, Osted s., Voldborg h., Københavns amt. NM C 7696.

  6. Arm ring of gold. 3rd century AD. Hoard find. Burs, Kållunge sn., Gotland. GF C 9991-

  7. Neck ring of gold. 23 x 31 cm, weight 317 g. Votive find. 4th-5th century AD. Hellested s., Stevns h., Præstø amt. NM C 6487.

  8. Dress pin of bronze. Single find. Pre-Roman Iron Age. Rørkjær mose, Vindum s., Middelsom herred., Viborg amt. NM C 3932. No information available about the pin on the left.

  9. Animal-shaped brooch of bronze. 4th century. Grave find. Kvassheim, Hå, Rogaland. B 5301c.

  10. Weight of brass in the form of a billy goat. L. 3.4 cm. Middle Ages. Lid ytre, Aurland k., Sogn & Fjordane. B 7979.

  11. Small billy goat of bronze. L. 2.6 cm, H. 3.2 cm. Middle Ages. Høyland, Hå k., Rogaland. B 6256.

  12. Mount of gilded silver in the form of an animal mask. Double grave. 6th century. Øvsthus, Kvinnherad k., Hordaland. B 3731i.

  13. Plate-shaped fibula of bronze. Single find. Pre-Roman Iron Age. Skjoldemosen, Nr. Alslev s., Falster Nr., Maribo amt. NM C 18553. To the right: Plate pin of bronze. Find site unknown. Pre-Roman Iron Age. NM C 21357.

  14. T-shaped fibulae. Pre-Roman Iron Age. Grave 25. Mellersta gravfältet. Vallhagar, Fröjel sn., Gotland. GF without number.

  15. Detail of the preceding. The fibula’s pin catch has the form of a long pig’s snout.

  16. Dress brooch of gold with garnets in cloisonné. In the central field a cross. Between four long-necked bird of prey heads, four masks peek out, of which two have moustaches. L. 5.6 cm. Weight 36.4 g. Single find. 6th century AD. Reinstrup, Sorø. NM Dnf 4/18.

  17. To the left: Pendant of gold with polished garnets. Inside the ornament are three tubes, probably for fragrances. Roman work. Hoard find. ca. 400 AD. Hesselager Fredskov, Hesselager s., Gudme h., Svendborg amt. NM Dnf 2/50. To the right: Two-part arm ring of gold sheet with opposing animal heads. Probably from the Black Sea region. 4th century. Hoard find in bog. Tebbestrup, Galten s., Randers amt. NM C 18889.

  18. Mount of gilded silver sheet on sword scabbard. Grave find. 4th century. Rømme, Orkanger k., Sør-Trøndelag. T 15339.

  19. Sword of iron with upper and lower guards of gilded silver and pommel in cloisonné with glass. Single find from a lake. 675-725 AD. Bildsø, Slagelse. NM without number.

  20. Bird-shaped knob of bronze with inlaid details in silver and with stamp ornamentation. Probably for a staff. L. ca. 12 cm. Single find. 5th century AD. Grenå area. NM C 6416.

  21. Belt mount of bronze with fire-striking stone of quartzite. Detail. Grave find. 5th-6th century AD. Hove, Vik, Sogn & Fjordane. B 561.

  22. Belt mount (?) of bronze with ring. Single find. Uncertain dating. Klim, Thisted. NM C 12277.

  23. Cruciform fibula of bronze with inlaid details in silver. Detail of the foot. Grave find. 5th century AD. Staurnes, Giske, Møre & Romsdal. B 719.

  24. S-shaped brooch of gilded silver with stamp ornamentation and details inlaid with niello. Grave find. 5th century AD. Hol, Inderøy, Nord-Trøndelag. T 9827.

  25. Lower part of relief brooch of gilded silver. Grave find. 5th century AD. Møllebakken, Gudhjem s., Bornholm. Same image as 201. NM C 6.

  26. Detail of two-part belt buckle of gilded silver with inlay of niello. Weapon offering find. 5th century AD. Ejsbøl mose, Haderslev. HAM E 9733 and 9864.

  27. Pretzel-shaped mount of gilded silver with bird of prey heads. W. 4 cm. Weapon offering find. 5th century. Ejsbøl mose, Haderslev. HAM E 7724 and E 9287.

  28. Section of two-part belt buckle of gilded silver inlaid with niello. 5th century. Weapon offering find. Ejsbøl mose, Haderslev. HAM E 9413. Cf. 29.

  29. As the preceding. The entire belt buckle. Note the six animal heads on the buckle part itself.

  30. Strap buckle of bronze with male mask surrounded by bird of prey, wild boar, wolf. Full width 8.5 cm. 6th-7th century. Without information. Sjælland. NM C 5480.

  31. Scabbard chape of gilded silver for sword scabbard. 5th century. Weapon offering find. Ejsbøl mose, Haderslev. HAM E 8941.

  32. Relief brooch of silver (detail). It was broken in antiquity and the original form is uncertain. Full length 8.5 cm. Hoard find. 5th century. Galsted, Agerskov s., Nr. Rangstrup h., Haderslev amt. NM DCCXXXVIII.

  33. Relief brooch of gilded silver with niello. Style I. Votive/hoard find. 5th century AD. Gummersmark, Bjæverskov s. and h., Præstø amt. NM C 12524.

  34. As the preceding. Detail.

  35. As the preceding. Detail. Below the horizontally positioned animal masks is a large diving bird figure seen from above.

  36. Relief brooch of silver. Detail of the foot with two profile bird of prey heads and three animal masks below. Style I. L. 12.3 cm. Unknown location. Denmark. NM C 21405.

  37. The foot of the same relief brooch as 33. Two profile animal figures with pointed ears and long tongues on each side of an en face mask. NM C 12524.

  38. Relief brooch of gilded silver with niello. Spiral ornamentation in chip-carving, meander and running dog in deep relief on the knobs. Sea monsters crawl along the outside of the foot and headplate. Nydam style. Single find. 5th century AD. Skjerne, Gunslev s., Falster Nr. h., Maribo amt. NM C 2217.

  39. Relief brooch of silver. The entire brooch. NM C 21405. Cf. 36.

  40. Details from the Gummersmark brooch’s headplate. Cf. 33.

  41. Relief brooch of gilded bronze. Detail. 5th-6th century AD. Högbro, Roma, Gotland. GF C 1763.

  42. Relief brooch of gilded bronze with inlaid garnets. L. 15.4 cm. Stray find. 5th-6th century AD. Lundbjers, Lummelunda, Gotland. GF C 7182.

  43. Detail of the preceding. On each side of the bow there is a mask.

  44. Detail of the preceding brooch’s headplate.

  45. Detail of the preceding brooch’s foot.

  46. At top: Relief brooch of gilded silver with niello. Detail of the headplate with deep chip-carving ornamentation. Grave find. Møllebakken (II), Østerlarsker, Bornholm. NM C 33. Relief brooch of gilded silver with niello, stamp ornamentation and chip-carving ornamentation. Detail of special headplate with two profile bird of prey heads and three bird of prey heads seen from above. Cf. the finger ring 4. Grave find. 4th-5th century. Møllebakken (I), Østerlarsker, Bornholm. NM C 32.

  47. As 42. The foot’s termination with mask. Note the outer strips with profile bird of prey heads.

  48. Relief brooch of gilded silver with niello and openwork framing of the headplate. Votive find in bog with gold bracteates and glass beads. Over-Hornbæk, Hornbæk s., Sdr. Lyng h., Viborg amt. NM C 9614.

  49. To the left: Small relief brooch of gilded silver with niello, stamp ornamentation and chip-carving ornamentation terminating with an animal mask. Melsted (I), Bornholm. NM C 2944. Small relief brooch of gilded silver terminating with a bird of prey mask with broad beak. Stamp ornamentation and spirals in chip-carving. Melsted (III), Bornholm. NM C 34.

  50. The foot part of 46 below. Four long-necked bird heads around a central ornament. Cf. fig. 16. The brooch terminates with a bird head with round eyes seen from above. Full length 16.4 cm. NM C 32.

  51. Detail of the headplate of brooch 48. Band-shaped, openwork animal figures as well as a spiral tendril around a square central field.

  52. Flat ring of bronze with riveted-on animal figures of silver. Diam. 9 cm. Stray find. Iron Age. Horsens. NM C 25569.

  53. Relief brooch of gilded silver. Grave find. 5th century. Hol, Inderøy, Nord-Trøndelag. T 9822.

  54. Double-edged gold-hilted sword. Detail of the upper guard in gilded silver with tendril ornamentation and pommel. 6th century AD. Grave V, Snartemo, Hægebostad, Vest-Agder. C 26001.

  55. Detail of the right side of the foot on relief brooch 53.

  56. Detail of the left side of the foot on relief brooch 53.

  57. Equal-armed dress brooch of bronze with knob. On the upper half two horse figures with feet toward each other are seen, and on the lower two animal figures with nape tufts positioned in the same way. L. 10.1 cm. Votive/hoard find. 5th century AD. Holmgård, Skals s., Rinds h., Viborg amt. NM J. nr. 6, Mus. nr. 36.

  58. The back of the pommel on sword 19. Two band-shaped animal bodies whose thighs and hind legs form a mask. Style II. NM without number.

  59. Mount of gilded bronze from reliquary shrine. Irish work. 7.5 x 7.5 x 7.5 cm. Submitted from Norway. (From the National Museum’s comparative collection). NM 624.

  60. Equal-armed brooch of gilded silver with niello. Grave find. 5th century AD. Hol, Inderøy, Nord-Trøndelag, cf. 53, 55, 56, 62. T 9823.

  61. Strap end mount of gilded silver. L. 5.5 cm. Weapon offering find. 5th century AD. Ejsbøl mose, Haderslev. HAM E 8956.

  62. The other half of 60.

  63. Dress brooch of bronze in the form of a bird of prey. Vendel Period. Silte sn., Gotland. GF C 9017.

  64. Dress brooch of silvered bronze. 7th century AD. Jelling s., Tørrild h., Vejle amt. NM C 22253.

  65. Horse-shaped plate brooch of bronze. Stray find. 7th century AD. Veggerslevmose, Veggerslev s., Djurs Nr. h., Randers amt. NM C 6592.

  66. Ornament plate of gilded bronze. Profile bird of prey with serpent in its beak. Stray find. Late Germanic Iron Age. Kobbeå, Østerlars, Bornholm. NM C 5955.

  67. Plate-shaped dress brooch of silvered bronze. Stray find. Viking Age. Borritsøe toft, Viborg amt. NM MMCXCVII.

  68. Relief button brooch of bronze with coating of white metal. Vendel Period. L. 11 cm. Unknown location. Gotland. GF Dep 482.

  69. Handle on wooden vessel in the form of a bird of prey head. 6th century AD. Votive find. Vimose, Odense. NM 24452.

  70. Relief button brooch of gilded bronze. 7th century. Bornholm (?). NM without number.

  71. S-shaped dress brooch of bronze. Vendel Period. Tingstäde sn. Gotland. GF C 9180.

  72. Serpent brooch of bronze with remains of waffled gold sheet and two of four set garnets. Grave find. 7th century. Barshalder, Grötlingbo sn., Gotland. GF C 8498.

  73. Serpent brooch of bronze. 7th century. Unknown location. Gotland. GF A 1643.

  74. Round, openwork disc of bronze. 8th century. Unknown location. Gotland. GF A 2069.

  75. Warrior helmet. Detail of the helmet crest, temple guard and the decorated ornamental plates in gilded bronze. Grave 5 in clinker-built boat. 7th century. Valsgärde, Uppland. UMF Vgde 5:10.

  76. Finger ring of gold with animal heads. Jutlandic type. Weight 71.6 g, Diam. 2.0 cm. 2nd century AD. Stray find 1882. Tjørring, Tjørring s., Hammerum h., Ringkøbing amt. NM C 5873.

  77. Braided chain of silver with animal head in filigree. Hoard find. Ca. 950 AD. Terslev, Terslev s., Ringsted h., Sorø amt. NM Dnf 40/11.

  78. Animal figure of silver. Hoard find. Late Viking Age. Hemänge, Ethelhem, Gotland. GF C 8914.

  79. Pendant of bronze in the form of a serpent. L. 4.5 cm. Viking Age. Without find information. NM C 21101.

  80. Belt buckle of gilded silver with ornaments in niello. Detail. Weapon offering find. 5th century. Ejsbøl mose, Haderslev. HAM E 9773.

  81. Harness mount of gilded bronze. Vendel Period. Grave 6. Valsgärde, Uppland. UMF Vgde 6:310.

  82. Double-edged sword with guards and pommel of gilded bronze. Vendel Period. Grave 6. Valsgärde, Uppland. UMF Vgde 6:207.

  83. Mount of gilded bronze for harness. Detail of 81. UMF Vgde 6: 313.

  84. Mount of gilded bronze for harness. Detail of 81. UMF Vgde 6:346.

  85. Scabbard mount (detail) of gilded bronze for single-edged sword. Vendel Period. Grave 6. Valsgärde, Uppland. UMF Vgde 6:140.

  86. Detail of strap cross for bridle 81. UMF Vgde 6:347.

  87. As the preceding. Cf. 81.

  88. Mount (detail) from harness 81.

  89. Strap cross for harness 81.

  90. Mount for harness 81.

  91. Relief button brooch of gilded bronze (detail) of Gotlandic type. 8th-9th century AD. Storhaugen, Hetland prestegård, Rogaland. B 488.

  92. Scabbard mount of gilded bronze, cf. 85. Vendel Period. Grave 6. Valsgärde, Uppland. UMF Vgde 6:140.

  93. Mount of gilded bronze for sword scabbard. UMF Vgde 6:140b. Cf. the preceding.

  94. Relief button brooch of gilded bronze (detail). Gotlandic type. Unknown find site. The National Museum’s Viking collection. NM without number.

  95. Mount of gilded bronze (detail). From harness 81. UMF Vgde 6:312.

  96. As the preceding.

  97. Ship-shaped dress brooch of bronze. L. 5.9 cm. Grave find. Viking Age. Lillevang, Gudhjem s., Bornholm. NM C 2894.

  98. Oval animal brooch of bronze. Grave find. 8th century. Torvskjådammen, Brønnøysund, Nordland. T 14049 IIIa.

  99. Breast ornament of gilded bronze with inlaid garnets. Grave find. Late Germanic Iron Age. Lousgård, Bornholm. without number.

  100. Mask of gilded bronze with eyes inlaid with glass paste. H. 3.4 cm. Viking Age. Grave find. Berg, Buskerud, Norway. The National Museum’s comparative collection. NM CMXXXI.

  101. Animal-shaped brooch of bronze with parallels on Bornholm. Grave find. 8th century. Mattas, Söderby, Lemland sn., Finland. KM 5179:2.

  102. Openwork, round dress brooch of bronze in the form of a bird. Diam. 6 cm. Grave find. Viking Age. Arnestad, Gloppen, Sogn & Fjordane. B 7653b.

  103. Part of ring pin of bronze in Borre style. Viking Age. SHM.

  104. Staff knob of bronze in the form of a man with three-ringed neck collar like the wooden figure from Rude Eskildsrup. Single find from burial mound. L. 6.2 cm. 5th-6th century. Søholt, Maribo. NM CMX.

  105. Mask (detail) on ring brooch of bronze, coated with silver and gold. Stray find. Viking Age. Helnæs, Båg h., Odense amt. NM without number.

  106. Toiletries: ear spoon and nail cleaner. Hoard find. Ca. 950 AD. Terslev, Terslev s., Ringsted h., Sorø amt. NM Dnf 40/11.

  107. Oval brooch with thin shell. L. 9 cm. 8th-9th century. Unknown find site. Trøndelag counties (?). T 1945.

  108. Plate-shaped dress brooch of bronze. Single find. 15.6 x 7.9 cm. Lyngby Torp, Hjørring. NM C 8970.

  109. Trefoil dress brooch of gilded bronze. Cross-measurement 6.5 cm. Grave find. Viking Age. Føllenslev s., Skippinge h., Holbæk amt. NM C 4628.

  110. Relief button brooch of gilded bronze (detail). 8th century. Melhus, Overhalla, Nord-Trøndelag. T 6574.

  111. Rectangular mount of bronze. 8th century. Hämeenlinna, Hattelmala, Finland. KM 8615:9.

  112. Miniature vane of bronze in Borre style. L. 5.2 cm. 9th century. Rangsby, Saltvik sn., Åland. KM 4284:13.

  113. Strap buckle of bronze. Viking Age. Gotland. GF C 4853.

  114. Belt buckle of bronze in Style I. 6th century. Grave find. Gulldynt, Vöyri sn., Finland. KM 8515.

  115. Bird of prey head of bronze. Hovinsaari, Räisälä, Finland. KM 2298.154.

  116. Ornament chain with five links and two animal-head-shaped chain holders. Grave 479A. Viking Age. Stora Ihre, Hellvi sn., Gotland. GF C 10221:135.

  117. Detail of the preceding turned. The animal head then becomes a mask.

  118. 5 casket keys. Stray finds. Viking Age. Denmark. (top right) Casket key of bronze with gripping beast. NM 22256. (bottom left) Casket key of bronze with openwork shaft. NM 7253.

  119. Ring pin of bronze in Borre style. The pin is missing. Viking Age. SHM.

  120. Ring brooch of bronze. Diam. 3 cm. Stray find. Viking Age. Dragør, Tårnby s., Sokkelund h., København amt. NM without number.

  121. Two casket keys of bronze with gripping beasts. Grave find. Viking Age. Mindresunde, Stryn, Sogn & Fjordane. B 4505.

  122. Trefoil brooch of bronze in Borre style. Grave find. Viking Age. Tryti, Vik, Sogn & Fjordane. B 9643.

  123. Ring pin of bronze. Viking Age. Spissøy nedre, Bømlo k., Hordaland. B 11377.

  124. Underside of box-shaped brooch of bronze. Detail. Viking Age. Sigdes, Rone sn., Gotland. GF C 2939.

  125. Small sculpture of jet. Found on the beach. Viking Age. Tresfjorden, Vestnes k., Møre & Romsdal. B 290.

  126. Oval brooch with double shell of gilded bronze with knobs in the form of human heads. Stray find. Viking Age. Ågerup, Merløse h., Holbæk amt. NM C 22178.

  127. Top piece of bronze (part) for a mane-pole (mankestol). Viking Age. Rovalds, Eskelhem sn., Gotland. GF C 2360.

  128. Silver chain with end caps in the form of animal heads. Hoard find. Viking Age. Mandemerke, Magleby s., Mønbo h., Præstø amt. NM C 1784.

  129. Openwork upper shell for an oval brooch of gilded bronze with strips of braided silver wires. Viking Age. Denmark. NM unidentified.

  130. Animal-head-shaped dress brooch of bronze with gripping beast. Grave 498. Viking Age. Stora Ihre, Hellvi sn., Gotland. GF C 9322:296.

  131. Animal-head-shaped dress brooch of bronze. Gotland. SHM.

  132. Trefoil dress brooch of bronze with four-legged animals seen from above. Viking Age. Tingelstad, Oppland, Norway. (The National Museum’s comparative collection) NM C 6257.

  133. Oval brooch of bronze with gripping beast (detail). Single find. Viking Age. Lisbjerg Skov. Lisbjerg s., V. Lisbjerg h., Århus amt. NM C 11331.

  134. The upper shell (detail) of double-shelled oval brooch of bronze with bird figures. Viking Age. Denmark. NM unidentified.

  135. Detail of 133. Gripping beast with nape tuft and good grip on its own neck.

  136. Finger ring of gold, 23 carat. Weight 70.3 g. Stray find. 6th century. Possibly Lombardic. Ryslinge, Sjælland. NM C 8796.

  137. Oval brooch of bronze with gripping beast. Single find. Viking Age. Høm s., Ringsted h., Sorø amt. NM C 7743.

  138. Oval brooch of bronze. (detail). Sweden. SHM unidentified.

  139. Oval dress brooch of bronze. Borre style. Viking Age. Renålen, Ålen s., Holtålen, Sør-Trøndelag. T 14170.

  140. Small sculpture of a gripping beast in jet. Viking Age. Voll nedre, Lærdal k., Sogn & Fjordane. B 6275d.

  141. Dress brooch of silver. Grave find. Viking Age. Gausel, Stavanger k., Rogaland. B 4233.

  142. Upper shell of oval brooch of bronze. Viking Age. Bredvoll, Åfjorden, Sør-Trøndelag. T 1280.

  143. Single-shelled oval brooch of bronze. Viking Age. Bakken av Fevåg, Stjørn s., Bjugn p., Sør-Trøndelag. T 13033a.

  144. Oval splendid brooch of gilded bronze, with gripping beast. Viking Age. Near Kjelstad, Horg, Sør-Trøndelag. T 862b.

  145. Oval animal brooch from the same find as 98. T 14049a.

  146. Sword pommel of iron with male mask. Viking Age. Vigdal, Buvik, Sør-Trøndelag. T 67.

  147. Top piece of bronze for mane-pole. Boat grave. Viking Age. Fosnes, Fosnes, Nord-Trøndelag. T 15115c.

  148. Trefoil ornament of gilded silver with plant ornamentation. W. 6.5 cm. Carolingian work. Grave find. Viking Age. Huseby, Skaun, Sør-Trøndelag. T 8526c.

  149. Rectangular plate brooch of gilded bronze. Stray find. 7th century. Arnestad, Gloppen, Sogn & Fjordane. B 10058.

  150. Box-shaped brooch of gilded bronze with details in silver. Viking Age. Stora Ihre, grave 222c. Hellvi sn., Gotland. GF C 9322:186.

  151. As the preceding. The entire brooch.

  152. As the preceding. Detail.

  153. As the preceding. Detail.

  154. Box-shaped brooch of gilded bronze with applied twisted silver wires. Diam. 8.6 cm. Viking Age. Pilgårds, Boge sn., Gotland. GF C 10052.

  155. Dress brooch of bronze with details in white metal. L. 6.5 cm. Viking Age. Gunilde, Sanda sn., Gotland. GF C 6187.

  156. Brooch made of two fish-head-shaped pendants of bronze. Viking Age. Gotland. GF C 3516.

  157. Ring brooch of silver. The pin is missing. Viking Age. Gotland. GF unidentified.

  158. Ring brooch of silver. Viking Age. Gotland. GF unidentified.

  159. Ring pin of silver. Weight 123.6 g. Pin length 19.3 cm. Hoard find. Viking Age. Klints, Gothem sn., Gotland. GF C 9347.

  160. Tongue-shaped pendant of bronze. Grave 215. Ihre, Hellvi sn., Gotland. SHM 22917.

  161. Ring brooch of bronze, probably Baltic. Diam. 5.5 cm. Viking Age. Unknown find site, Gotland. GF Dep 753.

  162. Ring brooch of silver with multi-faceted end knobs. Viking Age. Gotland. GF unidentified.

  163. Tongue-shaped pendant of bronze, coated with silver (detail). Viking Age. Norrlanda sn. Gotland. GF C 534.

  164. Box-shaped brooch. Detail of side post. Stånga sn., Gotland. GF A 1524.

  165. Box-shaped brooch of bronze with coating of silver and gold. Detail of the underside’s decoration. Västergärde, Sundre sn., Gotland. GF C 6346.

  166. Sieve-shaped pendant. Gotland. GF A 3740.

  167. Weathervane of bronze (detail). Ringerike style. Late Viking Age. Källunge kyrka, Gotland. GF Dep 1429. Cf. 180-182.

  168. Bit mount of gilded bronze. 3.9 cm. 7th century. Botes, Ethelhem sn., Gotland. GF C 10217. Cf. 170.

  169. Key of iron. Detail of 171.

  170. Detail of 168.

  171. Key of iron with animal head. L. 16.7 cm. Viking Age. Båticke, Anga sn., Gotland. GF C 5119.

  172. Detail of 173.

  173. Strap distributor of bronze. Viking Age. Unknown find site, possibly Sanda sn., Gotland. GF dep C 690.

  174. Strap distributor of bronze. Detail. Viking Age. Unknown find site, Gotland. GF Dep C 683.

  175. Box-shaped brooch of bronze with coating of silver. Stånga sn., Gotland. GF A 1524. Cf. 164.

  176. Arm or neck ring of silver. Detail. Hoard find. Karls, Tingstede sn., Gotland. GF C 10396.

  177. Pendant of bronze. Baltic type. Viking Age. Visby, Gotland. GF C 7647.

  178. Bird figure of gilded silver. Hoard find. 11th century AD. Græsli, Tydal, Selbu, Sør-Trøndelag. T 2042.

  179. Square strap mount with animal figures in early Style II. 6th century. Unknown find site. Denmark. NM without number.

  180. Weathervane of bronze. The other side of 167. Källunge kyrka. Gotland.

  181. Detail of the preceding.

  182. As the preceding. The vane’s other side of which 167 is a section.

  183. Oval brooch of bronze with plastic ornamentation. Detail. Stray find. Viking Age. Holbæk amt. NM C 325.

  184. Animal-shaped brooch of bronze with inlay of red glass paste. Grave find. Viking Age. Lousgård, grave 10, Østerlarsker s., Østre h., Bornholm amt. NM C 5607.

  185. Animal-head-shaped end knob of bronze with gilding, coating of white metal and niello. From mane-pole (mankestol) of wood. L. ca. 8 cm. Viking Age. Hoard find 1871. Mammen, Mammen s., Middelsom h., Viborg amt. NM C 1063.

  186. Beaker of silver, possibly a travelling chalice, partly gilded and with ornamentation in Jelling style. H. 4.3 cm. ca. 950 AD. Nordhaugen in Jelling, Tørrild h., Vejle amt. NM CCCLXXII.

  187. Animal-head-shaped end knob of bronze for mane-pole. Jelling/Mammen style. W. 6 cm. Viking Age. Without find information. Denmark. NM C 5254.

  188. Smoothing board of bronze with gilding. Grave find. 7th century. Lousgård, grave 10. Østerlars s., Østre h., Bornholms amt. NM C 5625.

  189. Axe of iron with ornamentation in the form of a large profile bird inlaid with silver wire. Mammen style. L. 17.5 cm. Grave find. Late Viking Age. Bjerringhøj, Mammen s., Middelsom h., Viborg amt. NM C 133.

  190. As the preceding, but the other side with plant ornament—a stylized tree.

  191. Beaker of silver. Detail. Probably grave find. Viking Age. Lejre. Allerslev s., Volborg h., Københavns amt. NM C 11373.

  192. Rim mount of gilded bronze ornamented in Ringerike style for drinking horn. Probably grave find. Late Viking Age. Bispetorv, Århus. NM C 9487.

  193. Weathervane of bronze with the motif lion in combat with serpent executed in Ringerike style. Kållunge kyrka, Gotland. GF Dep 1429. Cf. 167, 180-182.

  194. Round, domed pendant of gold with ornaments in filigree. Hoard find. Viking Age. Hoen, Øvre Eiker, Buskerud. C 719-51.

  195. Game piece of whale bone. Detail. Viking Age. Kastager Strand, Utterslev s., Lolland Nr.h., Maribo amt. NM C 5408.

  196. Work in ivory, “Scandinavian,” photographed at a museum in León, San Isidoro, Spain. SP 27-1-11A4.

  197. Pendant of gold. Diam. 1.7 cm. 6th century. Tangevej, Ribe. NM C 3215.

  198. Crown neck ring of bronze. Pre-Roman Iron Age. No find information. Denmark. NM without number.

  199. In the foreground: Spiral arm ring of bronze. Pre-Roman Iron Age. Hatting mark. Hatting s., and h., Hatting amt. NM C 10186. In the background: Spiral arm ring of bronze. Pre-Roman Iron Age. No information. NM.

  200. Plate-shaped dress brooch of bronze. L. 7.4 cm. Lousgård, grave 8, Østerlarsker s., Østre h., Bornholm amt. NM C 5632.

  201. The foot of relief brooch of gilded silver with inlay of niello. Grave find. 5th century. Møllebakken, Gudhjem s., Bornholm. The same image as 25 only turned 180 degrees. NM C 6.

  202. As 108.

  203. Sword pommel of silver. Stray find. Viking Age. Kalundborg or Holbæk area. NM C 3118.

  204. Plate brooch of bronze. 8th century. Grave find. Lousgård. Østerlarsker s., Østre h., Bornholm. NM C 5907.

  205. Mount of gilded bronze on mane-pole (mankestol) of wood. Detail. Full width ca. 45 cm. Grave find. Late Viking Age. Søllested, Båg h., Odense amt. NM C 25581.

  206. Swan figure of bronze from mane-pole. Votive/hoard find. Viking Age. Skællebæk, Tystrup, Holbæk amt. NM C 9821.

  207. Mount of gilded bronze in the form of a bird of prey. As 205.

  208. Animal-head-shaped end knob of gilded bronze. As 205.

  209. Top mount of gilded bronze. As 205.

  210. Animal-head-shaped end knob of gilded bronze for mane-pole (mankestol). Viking Age. Møllemosegård, Hillerslev s., Sallinge h., Svendborg amt. NM C 3894.

  211. Mount of gilded bronze for mane-pole (mankestol). Detail. As 205.

  212. Trefoil brooch of bronze with ornaments in Borre style. Denmark. NM unidentified.

  213. Strap end mount of silver with plant ornamentation. Viking Age. Als, Sønderjylland. NM C 14201.

  214. Strap end mount of silver with plant ornamentation. L. 12.5 cm. Viking Age. Unknown find site. Denmark. NM without number.

  215. The back of 213 with cross and Latin inscription.

  216. Strap end mount of silver with plant ornamentation. Single find. Viking Age. Nr. Vedby, Falster. NM D 744.

  217. Alsen gemstone. Blue glass. Viking Age. V. Nebel, Brusk h., Vejle amt. NM C 23662.

Selected Bibliography

Andersson, K. 1995: Romartida guldsmide i Norden. III. Aun 21. Uppsala.

Andrén, A. et al.(ed.) 2004: Ordning mot kaos. Studier av förkristen kosmologi. Nordic Academic Press. Lund.

Christensen, A.E., Ingstad, A.S., Myhre, B. 1992: Osebergdronningens grav. Schibsted forlag. Oslo.

Egilssoga. Translated by L. Heggstad. Det norske samlaget 1978. Oslo

Hedeager, L. 2004: Dyr og andre mennesker - mennesker og andre dyr. Dyreornamentikkens transcendentale realitet. In: Andrén, A. et al.(ed.) Ordning mot kaos. Studier av nordisk förkristen kosmologi. Nordic Academic Press. Lund. 219-252.

Holtsmark, A.1990: Norrøn mytologi. 2nd ed. Det norske samlaget. Oslo

Iversen, M. 1991 (ed.). Mammen. Grav, kunst og samfund i vikingetid. Jysk Arkæologisk Selskabs Skrifter XXVIII. Århus.

Jansson, R.B.F. 1984: Runinskrifter i Sverige. 3rd printing. AWE/ Geber. Stockholm.

Jørgensen, L. & Petersen, P.V. 1998: Guld, magt og tro. Danske guldskatte fra oldtid og middelalder. Nationalmuseet. Thanning & Appel. København.

Klæsøe, I.S. 2002: Hvordan de blev til. Vikingetidens stilgrupper fra Broa til Urnes. In: Nielsen, K.H. Nordeuropeisk dyrestil 400-1100 e.Kr. Hikuin 29, p. 75-104.

Kristoffersen, S. 2000: Sverd og spenne. Dyreornamentikk og sosial kontekst. Høyskoleforlaget. Kristiansand S.

Lund Hansen, U. et al. 1995: Himlingøje - Seeland - Europa. Det Kongelige Oldskriftselskab. København.

Kulturhistorisk leksikon for Nordisk Middelalder. 1956-1978.

Lamm, J.P. & Nordström, H-Å. 1983: Vendel Period Studies. Statens Historiska Museum. Studies 2. Stockholm.

ditto 2003: Vindflöjlar. Ålandsk Odling. 61st year. Mariehamn. 129-143.

Mortensen, P. & Rasmussen, B.M. (ed.) 1991: Fra Stamme til Stat i Danmark. 2. Jysk Arkæologisk Selskabs Skrifter XXIII:2. Århus.

Nielsen, K.H. 1998: Animal Style - A Symbol of Might and Myth. Acta Archaeologica, Vol.69. København, 1-52.

ditto 1999: Ulvekrigeren. Dyresymbolik på våbenutstyr fra 6.-7. århundrede. In: Høiris, O. et al. (ed.) Menneskelivets mangfoldighed. Moesgaard.

Nordeuropæisk dyrestil. Karen Høilund Nielsen (ed.) Hikuin 29. Forlaget Hikuin, Moesgaard. 2002.

Nåsman, U. 1991: Mammen 1871. Ett vikingatida depåfynd. In: Iversen, M. (ed.) Mammen. Grav, kunst og samfund i vikingetid. Jysk Arkæologisk Selskabs Skrifter XXVIII. Århus. 217-260.

Price, N.S. 2002. The Viking Way. Religion and War in Late Iron Age Scandinavia. AUN 31. Uppsala.

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BENTE MAGNUS

Bente Magnus was born in 1939 in Oslo and spent her student years in Oslo, Athens and Bergen, where she took her master’s degree in Nordic archaeology with Classical Greek language and Classical archaeology as minor subjects. For about a year she was at Stavanger Museum’s archaeological department, but for nearly 20 years she was employed at the University of Bergen, Historical Museum, where she worked with cultural heritage management, research and public outreach. For several years she was active in the Society for the Preservation of Norwegian Ancient Monuments, in the National Association of Norwegian Art and Cultural History Museums and in ICOM, International Council of Museums. After a short time with the Directorate for Cultural Heritage in Oslo, she moved to Stockholm where she has continued her work in research and public outreach, this time as a freelancer. The late Iron Age, and especially the Migration Period, is the part of archaeology closest to her heart, and she has published a monograph, part of a volume on Norway’s prehistory as well as a large number of articles in both national and international journals.

GÉRARD FRANCESCHI

Gérard Franceschi was born in Bordeaux in 1915. He was one of the world’s few prominent specialists in photographing works of art. Through the twenty years he was employed in the French museum service, he enriched us with a number of art literature’s most beautiful works: L’histoire commence à Sumer - Les Etrusques - L’art Gaulois - Auvergne romane - Poitou romane and others. But the work on the sculptor Gislebertus, as we know it in Franceschi’s rendering of the work in Autun, surpasses everything else in significance. Franceschi felt and lived himself more into the artwork than the photography itself, which merely became the medium he was fortunate to find in his youth to express and capture the essence of art, evoked through a sensitive temperament. From 1962-65 he collaborated with Asger Jorn on his project for a book series of 32 volumes on Nordic art in antiquity and the Middle Ages. Gérard Franceschi died on 4 March 2001.

THE BIRD, THE ANIMAL AND THE HUMAN
IN NORDIC IRON AGE ART
WAS PLANNED BY ASGER JORN IN 1964-65.
HE ARRANGED THE IMAGES AND THEIR DIVISION
IN TWO VERSIONS.

THE BIRD, THE ANIMAL AND THE HUMAN
IS PUBLISHED BY BORGENS FORLAG,
VALBYGAARDSVEJ 33, DK-2500 VALBY
IN COLLABORATION WITH SILKEBORG KUNSTMUSEUM 2005.
TOVE NYHOLM HAS COMPILED
ASGER JORN’S VERSIONS OF THE IMAGE LAYOUT.
THE BOOK IS PRINTED BY ABILDGAARD GRAFISK A/S
ON NOPACOTE MAT
AND IS BOUND BY BOGBINDERIET CHR. HENRIKSEN.

THE VOLUMES ON NORDIC IRON AGE ART
IN THE SERIES 10,000 YEARS OF NORDIC FOLK ART
ARE PUBLISHED WITH SUPPORT FROM
AUGUSTINUSFONDEN
NY CARLSBERGFONDET

PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED
SKÅNE’S STONE SCULPTURE DURING THE 12TH CENTURY
BY ERIK CINTHIO, GÉRARD FRANCESCHI AND ASGER JORN
THE GOLDEN IMAGES OF THE NORTH
FROM THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES
BY POUL GRINDER HANSEN, GÉRARD FRANCESCHI AND
ASGER JORN
FOLK ART IN GREENLAND
BY TINNA MØBJERG, JENS ROSING, GÉRARD FRANCESCHI AND ASGER JORN
THE STAVE CHURCHES AND NORWEGIAN MEDIEVAL SOCIETY
BY ODDGEIR HOFTUN, GÉRARD FRANCESCHI AND ASGER JORN

ISBN: 87-21-02601-7