Viking art

[1] Generally speaking, the current knowledge of Viking art relies heavily upon more durable objects of metal and stone; wood, bone, ivory and textiles are more rarely preserved.

Pre-Christian traders and sea raiders, the Vikings first enter recorded history with their attack on the Christian monastic community on Lindisfarne Island in 793.

The Vikings initially employed their longships to invade and attack European coasts, harbors and river settlements on a seasonal basis.

Subsequently, Viking activities diversified to include trading voyages to the east, west, and south of their Scandinavian homelands, with repeated and regular voyages following river systems east into Russia and the Black and Caspian Sea regions, and west to the coastlines of the British Isles, Iceland and Greenland.

[2] Wood was undoubtedly the primary material of choice for Viking artists, being relatively easy to carve, inexpensive, and abundant in northern Europe.

As summarised by James Graham-Campbell: "These remarkable survivals allow us to form at least an impression of what we are missing from original corpus of Viking art, although wooden fragments and small-scale carvings in other materials (such as antler, amber, and walrus ivory) provide further hints.

Beyond the discontinuous artifactual records of wood and stone, the reconstructed history of Viking art to date relies most on the study of decoration of ornamental metalwork from a great variety of sources.

Men wore rings on their fingers, arms and necks, and held their cloaks closed with penannular brooches, often with extravagantly long pins.

A small number of large and lavish pieces or sets in solid gold have been found, probably belonging to royalty or major figures.

Less common, but significant nonetheless, are finds of precious metal objects in the form of treasure hoards, many apparently concealed for safe-keeping by owners later unable to recover their contents, although some may have been deposited as offerings to the gods.

They were a form of art commonly made out of glass[5] but also from different types of metals and, more rarely, natural materials such as amber, carnelian, rock crystal, etc.

One of these scenes depicted the god Thor's fishing expedition, which motif is also referenced in a 10th-century poem by Úlfr Uggason describing the paintings in a newly constructed hall in Iceland.

A continuous artistic tradition common to most of north-western Europe and developing from the 4th century CE formed the foundations on which Viking Age art and decoration were built: from that period onwards, the output of Scandinavian artists was broadly focused on varieties of convoluted animal ornamentation used to decorate a wide variety of objects.

Both Styles D and E developed within a broad Scandinavian context which, although in keeping with north-western European animal ornamentation generally, exhibited little influence from beyond Scandinavia .

David Wilson continued to produce mostly English-language studies on Viking art in subsequent years, joined over recent decades by the Norwegian art-historian Signe Horn Fuglesang with her own series of important publications.

The art of the Viking Age is organized into a loose sequence of stylistic phases which, despite the significant overlap in style and chronology, may be defined and distinguished on account both of formal design elements and of recurring compositions and motifs: Unsurprisingly, these stylistic phases appear in their purest form in Scandinavia itself; elsewhere in the Viking world, notable admixtures from external cultures and influences frequently appear.

In the British Isles, for example, art historians identify distinct, 'Insular' versions of Scandinavian motifs, often directly alongside 'pure' Viking decoration.

[16] The Carolingian head represents a snarling beast, possibly a wolf, with surface ornamentation in the form of interwoven animals that twist and turn as they are gripping and snapping.

A more particular diagnostic feature of Borre Style lies in a symmetrical, double-contoured 'ring-chain' (or 'ring-braid'), whose composition consists of interlaced circles separated by transverse bars and a lozenge overlay.

Richly decorated on both sides with inlaid silver designs, the iron axe was probably a ceremonial parade weapon that was the property of a man of princely status, his burial clothes bearing elaborate embroidery and trimmed with silk and fur.

On one face, the Mammen axe features a large bird with pelleted body, crest, circular eye, and upright head and beak with lappet.

Surmounting the tendril pattern appears a large striding animal in double-contoured rendering with spiral hips and a lip lappet.

[25] Some elements appear for the first time in Scandinavian art, such as different types of crosses, palmettes and pretzel-shaped nooses that tie together two motifs.

[27] The mid-Urnes Style has received a relatively firm dating based on its appearance on coins issued by Harald Hardrada (1047–1066) and by Olav Kyrre (1080–1090).