![]() Others believe it’s a depiction of Ragnarök and the beast symbolizes Thor, who is destined to kill the World Serpent and to be killed by it. We see a recurrent motif turning up in the span of two centuries, the battle of an animal, often a lion, and a snake. The interpretation of this plot is a difficult problem some scholars see it as the fight between Christianity (the lion) with Paganism (the snake). The meaning of snake and animal motifs in the Viking art ![]() Left:Uppland Runestone 871, public domain. On the Urnes runestones, on the other hand, the visual and narrative tension is mostly dispelled the large snakes more often bite themselves than the smaller snakes, or bite no one at all. In the earlier images the snake and the animal are clearly opposed to each other not just because they are fighting, there is a visual contrast between them as well the snakes’ bodies are flowing curves, while the beast is a lot more massive, its shape has more angles, and it occupies the central place in the composition. ![]() This similarity leads to the suggestion that these large snakes are really the transformed lion, and that the motif stays the same. Both this shape of head and this leg structure are obviously close to the way the fourlegged animal is shown on the Urnes stavkirke portal or in the Ringerike images. There is almost always only one larger snake, with a massive head shown in profile, an almond shaped eye, and often, legs with characteristic curls instead of joints. on runestones, look like a tangle of snakes, but if you look closer, the smaller snakes are shown as if seen from above. Photo by NinaNo CC BYSA 3.0Īgain we see the same animal and snake combat motif, both biting each other. ![]() © 2015 Kulturhistorisk museum, UiO / C C BYSA 4.0Īnother example is the north portal of the XIcentury Urnes stavkirke: ![]()
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