Niederdollendorf stone

The stone is notable both as an exemplary work of Frankish sculpture and as a possible early example of Germanic Christian material culture.

No consensus has been found for an interpretation of the circle, which has been read as a Christian bulla, a torc, a kind of necklace, or perhaps some feature from a Roman torso plate.

[4]: 62 One critic of this interpretation is Michael Friedrich, who complains of the absence of "any distinct symbol or signifier that might enable us to clearly identify Christ or even presume a Christian frame of reference.

If the interlace is interpreted in this way, though the triumphant Christ is often depicted in Christian iconography as atop a serpent, the motif is common to Germanic sources as well.

[6]: 20, 29  German prehistorian Herbert Kühn [de] also identified the figure with Odin, an interpretation which was in vogue in Germany during the Nazi era.

However, in more recent scholarship, Sebastian Ristow has contested this interpretation on the grounds that associations like these were by no means exclusively pagan, and would have been carried into later Christian cultures.