Искусство эпохи викингов: Скандинавские традиции VIII-XI веков

Term for art of Scandinavia and Viking settlements of 8th 11th centuries

Viking art, also known commonly as Norse art, is a term widely accepted for the art of Scandinavian Norsemen and Viking settlements further afield—particularly in the British Isles and Iceland—during the Viking Age of the 8th 11th centuries. Viking art has many design elements in common with Celtic, Germanic, the later Romanesque and Eastern European art, sharing many influences with each of these traditions. 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. The artistic record, therefore, as it has survived to the present day, remains significantly incomplete. Ongoing archaeological excavation and opportunistic finds, of course, may improve this situation in the future, as indeed they have in the recent past. Viking art is usually divided into a sequence of roughly chronological styles, although outside Scandinavia itself local influences are often strong, and the development of styles can be less clear.

The Vikings' regional origins lay in Scandinavia, the northernmost peninsula of continental Europe, while the term 'Viking' likely derived from their own term for coastal raiding—the activity by which many neighboring cultures became acquainted with the inhabitants of the region. Viking raiders attacked wealthy targets on the north western coasts of Europe from the late 8th until the mid 11th century CE. 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. 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.

Wood was undoubtedly the primary material of choice for Viking artists, being relatively easy to carve, inexpensive, and abundant in northern Europe. The importance of wood as an artistic medium is underscored by chance survivals of wood artistry at the very beginning and end of the Viking period, namely, the Oseberg ship burial carvings of the early 9th century and the carved decoration of the Urnes Stave Church from the 12th century. 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. The same is inevitably true of the textile arts, although weaving and embroidery were clearly well developed crafts."

With the exception of the Gotlandic picture stones prevalent in Sweden early in the Viking period, stone carving was apparently not practiced elsewhere in Scandinavia until the mid 10th century and the creation of the royal monuments at Jelling in Denmark. Subsequently, and likely influenced by the spread of Christianity, the use of carved stone for permanent memorials became more prevalent.

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. Several types of archaeological context have succeeded in preserving metal objects for present study, while the durability of precious metals, in particular, has preserved much artistic expression and endeavor. Jewelry was worn by both men and women, though of different types. Married women fastened their overdresses near the shoulder with matching pairs of large brooches. Modern scholars often call them "tortoise brooches" because of their domed shape. The shapes and styles of women's paired brooches varied regionally, but many used openwork. Women often strung metal chains or strings of beads between the brooches or suspended ornaments from the bottom of the brooches. Men wore rings on their fingers, arms and necks, and held their cloaks closed with penannular brooches, often with extravagantly long pins. Their weapons were often richly decorated on areas such as sword hilts. The Vikings mostly used silver or bronze jewelry, the latter sometimes gilded, but a small number of large and lavish pieces or sets in solid gold have been found, probably belonging to royalty or major figures. Decorated metalwork of an everyday nature is frequently recovered from Viking period graves, on account of the widespread practice of making burials accompanied by grave goods. The deceased was dressed in their best clothing and jewelry, and was interred with weapons, tools, and household goods. 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. Recently, given the increasing popularity and legality of metal detecting, an increasing frequency of single, chance finds of metal objects and ornaments (most probably representing accidental losses) is creating a fast expanding corpus of new material for study. Viking coins fit well into this latter category, but nonetheless form a separate category of Viking period artefact, their design and decoration largely independent of the developing styles characteristic of wider Viking artistic endeavor.

A non visual source of information for Viking art lies in skaldic verse, the complex form of oral poetry composed during the Viking Age and passed on until written down centuries later. Several verses speak of painted forms of decoration that have but rarely survived on wood and stone. The 9th century skald poet Bragi Boddason, for example, cites four apparently unrelated scenes painted on a shield. 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. The art historian Bernhard Salin was the first to systematise Germanic animal ornament, dividing it into three styles (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 (especially in southern Scandinavia) by Style D. Styles C and D provided the inspiration for the initial expression of animal ornament within the Viking Age, Style E, commonly known as the Oseberg / Broa Style. 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 .

Although preliminary formulations were made in the late 19th century, the history of Viking art first achieved maturity in the early 20th century with the detailed publication of the ornate wood carvings discovered in 1904 as part of the Oserberg ship burial by the Norwegian archaeologist Haakon Shetelig. Importantly, it was the English archaeologist David M. Wilson, working with his Danish colleague Ole Klindt Jensen to produce the 1966 survey work Viking Art, who 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 with her own series of important publications. Together these scholars have combined authority with accessibility to promote the increasing understanding of Viking art as a cultural expression.

The Oseberg Style characterises the initial phase in what has been considered Viking art. The Oseberg Style takes its name from the Oseberg Ship grave, a well preserved and highly decorated longship discovered in a large burial mound at the Oseberg farm near Tønsberg in Vestfold, Norway, which also contained a number of other richly decorated wooden objects. A characteristic motif of the Oseberg Style is the so called gripping beast. This motif is what clearly distinguishes the early Viking art from the styles that preceded it. The chief features of the gripping beast are the paws that grip the borders around it, neighbouring beasts or parts of its own body. Currently located at the Viking Ship Museum, Bygdøy, and over 70 feet long, the Oseberg Ship held the remains of two women and many precious objects that were probably removed by robbers early before it was found. The Oseberg ship itself is decorated with a more traditional style of animal interlace that does not feature the gripping beast motif. However, five carved wooden animal head posts were found in the ship, and the one known as the Carolingian animal head post is decorated with gripping beasts, as are other grave goods from the ship. 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. The Oseberg style is also characterized by traditions from the Vendel era, and it is nowadays not always accepted as an independent style.

The Broa style, named after a bridle mount found at Broa, Halla parish, Gotland, is sometimes included with the Oseberg style, and sometimes held as its own.

The Borre Style embraces a range of geometric interlace / knot patterns and zoomorphic (single animal) motifs, first recognised in a group of gilt bronze harness mounts recovered from a ship grave in Borre mound cemetery near the village of Borre, Vestfold, Norway, and from which the name of the style derives. Borre Style prevailed in Scandinavia from the late 9th through to the late 10th century, a timeframe supported by dendrochronological data supplied from sites with characteristically Borre Style artifacts

The 'gripping beast' with a ribbon shaped body continues as a characteristic of this and earlier styles. As with geometric patterning in this phase, the visual thrust of the Borre Style results from the filling of available space: ribbon animal plaits are tightly interlaced and animal bodies are arranged to create tight, closed compositions. As a result, any background is markedly absent – a characteristic of the Borre Style that contrasts strongly with the more open and fluid compositions that prevailed in the overlapping Jellinge Style. 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. The Borre ring chain occasionally terminates with an animal head in high relief, as seen on strap fittings from Borre and Gokstad. The ridges of designs in metalwork are often nicked to imitate the filigree wire employed in the finest pieces of craftsmanship.

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). Two wood carvings from Oslo have been dated to c. 1050–1100 and the Hørning plank is dated by dendrochronology to c. 1060–1070.

The Urnes Romanesque Style does not appear on runestones which suggests that the tradition of making runestones had died out when the mixed style made its appearance since it is well represented in Gotland and on the Swedish mainland.

Brink, S. with Price, N. (eds) (2008). The Viking World, [Routledge Worlds], Routledge: London and New York, 2008. Graham Campbell, J. (2001), The Viking World, London, 2001.

Anker, P. (1970). The Art of Scandinavia, Volume I, London and New York, 1970. Fuglesang, S. H. (1996). "Viking Art", in Turner, J. (ed. ), The Grove Dictionary of Art, Volume 32, London and New York, 1996, pp. 514–27, 531–32. Graham Campbell, J. (1980). Viking Artefacts: A Select Catalogue, British Museum Publications: London, 1980. Graham Campbell, James (2013). Viking Art, Thames & Hudson, 2013. Fred S. Kleiner, Gardner's Art Through The Ages: The Western Perspective, Volume I. (Boston, Mass. : Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2009)
Roesdahl, E. and Wilson, D. M. (eds) (1992). From Viking to Crusader: Scandinavia and Europe 800–1200, Copenhagen and New York, 1992. [exhibition catalogue]. Williams, G., Pentz, P. and Wemhoff, M. (eds), Vikings: Life and Legend, British Museum Press: London, 2014. [exhibition catalogue]. Wilson, D. M. & Klindt Jensen, O. (1980). Viking Art, second edition, George Allen and Unwin, 1980.