European tradition, was anything but native. If any foreign element was introduced, it
was immediately absorbed – almost unrecognisably – into the native repertoire.
The dendrochronological date for the Oseberg ship, built c. 820 and buried in 834 ,
provides a firm chronological point in the development of style E (Bonde and
Christensen 1993 ) – a style which faded towards the end of the century (although the
gripping-beast motif survived into the succeeding Borre style).
Not all Viking art was zoomorphic; narrative art also occurs, particularly in Gotland,
where a series of ‘picture stones’ (Sw bildstenar) – unique to the island – date from the
fifth to well into the eleventh century (Lindqvist 1941 ; Nylén 1978 ). Slabs of limestone,
engraved with images representing a cult of death, were erected in pagan grave-fields. In
the Viking Age, however, they were often set up as memorials away from the burial
grounds. Within a frame, on a grand stone from Ardre (Figure 24. 2 ), are two panels – in
the upper frame is a rider on an eight-legged horse; to his left a semicircular design is
usually interpreted as a building. Below is a complicated scene of armed warriors and
at least one woman. The lower field is dominated by a ship in full sail with rising
prow- and stern-posts. Below the ship – to the left – are two figures in a boat, fishing. In
the middle is a forge with various smiths’ tools. To the right are two recumbent bodies,
apparently headless, and a man within a rectangle apparently caught up in interlaced
snakes. Two men (bottom left) spear a fish from a boat. Other figures, structures and
implements are scattered seemingly at random throughout the field.
It is assumed that the scenes on the stones are drawn from Old Norse mythology.
Apart from what are clearly representations of the hero Sigurðr, and of the god Þórr,
fishing, few clear and understandable representations of Old Norse myth and religion in
Viking art can be related to literary sources which recount pagan tales. A common motif
of the Gotland stones is the ship, which in the Viking Age is shown in full sail crewed
by armed men, and is clearly in continuous tradition from oared vessels depicted on
stones as early as the fourth century. The idea of a funerary ship is familiar in Germanic
mythology and both ship burials and ship settings in Scandinavia witness – as do these
images of ships – to the belief in a journey to an afterlife by ship.
Lindqvist ( 1941 – 2 ) erected a chronology for the stones which spanned the period
from c. ad 400 to c. 1100 , but with a gap in the sequence, between say 850 and 1000.
This gap is unlikely (Wilson 1998 ), particularly as the ornament of some eleventh-
century stones are closely related to that of Ardre, which is conventionally dated to the
eighth or ninth century. It is more likely that the Viking series extended from the late
eighth or early ninth century – a date strengthened by stylistic and figural parallels in
narrative textiles from Oseberg – until the mid-eleventh century.
Outside Gotland, narrative stones largely date from the tenth and eleventh centur-
ies and are only marginally related to those on the island. There are significant
parallels to the scenes on the Gotland stones, however, on a wooden wagon and on
tapestries from Oseberg (Krafft 1956 ), and on a fragment of tapestry from Över-
hogdal, Härjedalen, Sweden, although here chronological opinions differ (Franzén
and Nockert 1992 : 49 – 50 ; Wilson 1995 : 81 – 5 ). Further, representational art remin-
iscent of that on the stones occurs on metalwork of the early Viking Age (Arwidsson
1989 : 58 ff.).
The sequence of zoomorphic ornament continues with the Borre style which, succeed-
ing style E, is found throughout Scandinavia and the Viking colonies. Named after a
group of gilt-bronze harness-mounts found in a ship burial at Borre, Vestfold, Norway
–– chapter 24: The development of Viking art––