snake heads and, on some Swedish runestones, the heads of some of the coarser snakes –
are seen from above.
The decoration of the earliest elements of the Urnes stave-church provides a rare
example of what must have been a considerable body of high-quality woodcarving
which would have been seen throughout Scandinavia in the second half of the eleventh
century and in the early twelfth century. Other Urnes-style wooden sculpture survives –
though rarely – from church sites throughout Scandinavia. The fact that so much of this
art is found in Christian contexts re-emphasises that there is nothing specifically pagan
in Viking Age art styles.
The Urnes style dominates the ornament of the runestones of central Sweden; as a
result the style itself has sometimes been labelled as the ‘rune-stone style’. The sweeping
deeply curved relief seen for example in wood on the Urnes portal (Figure 24. 7 ) is not
attempted in the harder medium of Swedish stone. Much of the decoration is highly
competent; but unfortunately the ornament on these stones is not easily related to the
classic Urnes style, being simple and often more coarsely executed. More than a hundred
Swedish rune carvers are named, and it is assumed that the writer of the runes also
provided the design of the snake in which the inscription was enclosed. Many ‘unsigned’
stones have been attributed to named carvers on grounds of orthography, language and
style; but there is only general agreement concerning the relative chronology of the
different craftsmen.
On the basis of the historical content of the inscriptions of some of the runestones,
some sort of chronology has been erected. Twenty-five stones, for example, commemorate
Figure 24. 7 Portal of the wooden stave-church from Urnes, Norway. Copyright Leif Anker, Oslo.–– chapter 24: The development of Viking art––