Viking art

• 1. The Raid That Started It All

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  In the year 793, a group of armed men landed on Lindisfarne Island and attacked a Christian monastic community. This event marked the first recorded appearance of Vikings in history. The attackers came from Scandinavia, the northernmost peninsula of continental Europe. Their name likely derived from their own word for coastal raiding. Neighboring cultures learned about these people through such violent encounters. Over the next three centuries, Viking activities expanded beyond simple raids. They began trading voyages to the east, west, and south of their homelands. Repeated journeys followed river systems into Russia and reached the Black and Caspian Sea regions. Other expeditions traveled west to the coastlines of the British Isles, Iceland, and Greenland. Evidence exists showing that some Vikings reached Newfoundland well before Christopher Columbus arrived in the New World. Trading and merchant activities accompanied settlement and colonization in many territories.

• 2. The Silence Of Wood And Textile

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  Wood was undoubtedly the primary material of choice for Viking artists because it was relatively easy to carve, inexpensive, and abundant in northern Europe. Despite this preference, wood survives only rarely compared to metal or stone artifacts. Chance survivals of wood artistry exist at the very beginning and end of the Viking period. These include the Oseberg ship-burial carvings from the early 9th century and the carved decoration of the Urnes Stave Church from the 12th century. James Graham-Campbell noted that these remarkable survivals allow us to form at least an impression of what we are missing from the original corpus of Viking art. Wooden furniture, decorated household items, painted interiors, and embroidered textiles would have been common but most have disappeared. The artistic record remains significantly incomplete due to this preservation bias. Pigment traces found on wood and ships provide evidence that the Vikings frequently used a mixture of natural pigments and oils or fats to paint their carvings and surfaces. This suggests that a lot of the carved designs, shields, wooden beams, and ships from that era were likely considerably more vibrant and eye-catching than they appear today. Color was significantly more important in Viking art than is commonly believed, although very little paint has survived the ground's rapid deterioration.

• 3. Salin And The System Of Styles

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  A continuous artistic tradition common to most of north-western Europe formed the foundations upon which Viking Age art and decoration were built. This tradition developed from the 4th century CE onwards with varieties of convoluted animal ornamentation. The art historian Bernhard Salin was the first to systematise Germanic animal ornament by dividing it into three styles labeled I, II, and III. The latter two were subsequently subdivided by Arwidsson into three further styles: Style C, flourishing during the 7th century and into the 8th century before being largely replaced by Style D. Styles C and D provided the inspiration for the initial expression of animal ornament within the Viking Age known as Style E or the Oseberg Broa Style. Although preliminary formulations were made in the late 19th century, the history of Viking art first achieved maturity in the early 20th century. This occurred with the detailed publication of ornate wood carvings discovered in 1904 as part of the Oserberg ship-burial by the Norwegian archaeologist Haakon Shetelig. It was the English archaeologist David M. Wilson working with his Danish colleague Ole Klindt-Jensen who produced the 1966 survey work Viking Art. They created foundations for the systematic characterization of the field still employed today together with a developed chronological framework. 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.

• 4. The Ribbon And The Ring

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  The Borre Style embraced a range of geometric interlace knot patterns and zoomorphic single animal motifs first recognised in gilt-bronze harness mounts recovered from a ship grave in Borre mound cemetery near the village of Borre in Vestfold Norway. Borre Style prevailed in Scandinavia from the late 9th through to the late 10th century according to dendrochronological data supplied from sites like Gokstad dated between 900 and 905 and Tune dated between 905 and 910. A more particular diagnostic feature of Borre Style lies in a symmetrical double-contoured ring-chain whose composition consists of interlaced circles separated by transverse bars and a lozenge overlay. The ridges of designs in metalwork are often nicked to imitate the filigree wire employed in the finest pieces of craftsmanship. The Jellinge Style is a phase of Scandinavian animal art during the late 10th century bridging the earlier Borre style with the later Mammen style. It was originally applied to complex objects in Jelling Denmark such as Gorm's Cup made for King Gorm and Harald Bluetooth's great runestone. The Mammen Style takes its name from an axe recovered from a wealthy male burial marked a mound at Mammen in Jutland Denmark where wood used in construction of the grave chamber was felled in winter 970, 971.

• 5. The Last Dance Of Animals

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  The Urnes Style was the last phase of Scandinavian animal art during the second half of the 11th century and in the early 12th century. The style is characterized by slim and stylised animals that are interwoven into tight patterns. The animals heads are seen in profile with slender almond-shaped eyes and upwardly curled appendages on the noses and necks. Mid-Urnes Style has received relatively firm dating based on coins issued by Harald Hardrada between 1047 and 1066 and by Olav Kyrre between 1080 and 1090. Two wood carvings from Oslo have been dated to around 1050, 1100 while the Hørning plank is dated by dendrochronology to c. 1060, 1070. The mid-Urnes Style would stay popular side by side with the late Urnes style of the runemaster Öpir who created a style in which the animals are extremely thin and make circular patterns in open compositions. This style also appears on a plank from Bølstad and on a chair from Trondheim Norway. The Jarlabanke Runestones show traits both from this late style and from the mid-Urnes style of Fot and Balli.

• 6. Crosses And Old Gods

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  The Vikings' art started to show how their beliefs changed as Christianity spread through Scandinavia in the late Viking age. Traditional patterns that came from myths and stories from other religions did not go away right away. Instead many were mixed with Christian symbols. This is very clear on late runestones which sometimes have crosses next to the usual animal designs. Stone crosses and church decorations were some of the new kinds of art that came about. These works of art show how Viking art changed during a big change in religion. Instead of replacing older traditions, many artists mixed old and new images to make pieces that show both how cultures have changed and how they have stayed the same. In the British Isles for example art historians identify distinct Insular versions of Scandinavian motifs often directly alongside pure Viking decoration. Evidence exists for Vikings reaching Newfoundland well before the later voyages of Christopher Columbus came to the New World. Trading and merchant activities were accompanied by settlement and colonization in many of these territories.