Gotlandic Picture Stones in European Contexts and Interdisciplinary Perspectives

The richly decorated memorial stones from the Migration Period to the Late Viking Age on the Baltic Sea island of Gotland are among the best-known and most iconic monuments of early Swedish history, and represent a unique source for the cultural and religious history of the ancient North. The countless figurative, and often narrative, depictions on these stone slabs offer valuable insights into the cult of the dead, beliefs in the afterlife, and the mythology of periods whose mental landscapes would otherwise remain largely inaccessible today due to the absence of contemporary literary sources. The monuments provide an excellent source for the study of Late Iron Age material culture, while their images and ornaments reflect extensive supraregional networks. This comprehensive and lavishly illustrated volume, based on research first presented at the Second Picture Stone Symposium in Visby in August 2022, presents the most up-to-date scholarship on these remarkable monuments from across a range of disciplines, drawing not only on archaeology but also on art history, history of religion, Old Norse philology and runology, and digital archaeology and geology. Together, these chapters offer new insights into the role of the Gotland picture stones within broader European contexts.

List of Illustrations

Introduction

1. History of Research, Ancient Images 2.0, and the Picture Stone Symposia
Sigmund Oehrl

2. A New Typology of the Early Gotlandic Picture Stones as Basis for Conclusions on Their Origins: With Selected Results from the Ancient Images Digitization Project
Hannah Strehlau

3. Early Gotlandic Picture Stones and Migration Period Gold Bracteates
Charlotte Behr

4. Edging or Erecting? Re-evaluating Lindqvist’s Kerbstone Category
Cherie Jeanette Larkin

5. Limestone Slabs on Öland as Parallels to Gotlandic Picture Stones?
Anders Andrén

6. Interlaced Connections: The Altar Wall of Mals in Vinschgau and the Gotlandic Picture Stones Type C/D
Egon Wamers

7. Carolingian Influence on the Viking Period Picture Stones of Gotland?
Lukas Albrecht

8. Versatile Visual Vocabularies: Re-assessing the Iconographic Relationships of Anglo-Scandinavian Stone Sculpture and Gotlandic Picture Stones
Amanda Doviak

9. Viking Stone Monuments and the Coming of Christianity: Comparing the Manx Crosses of the Scandinavian Series and Gotland’s Period-E Runic Picture Stones
Dirk H. Steinforth

10. Space and Directionality in the Visual Language of the Viking Age Gotland Picture Stones
Manu Braithwaite-Westoby

11. Set in Stone? Reflections of Material Culture on the Gotlandic Picture Stones
Gregor Hellweg

12. Iconography in Context: Methodological Problems in Interpreting the Imagery of the Gotlandic Picture Stones
Michaela Helmbrecht

13. Ritual Killings and Human Sacrifices on Gotlandic Picture Stones
Klas Wikström af Edholm

14. The Andvari Iconographic Thesaurus: A Controlled Vocabulary for the Digital Corpus of Gotlandic Picture Stones
Lilla Kopár, Beth Newman Ooi, and Nancy Wicker

15. Picture Stones and Runes: A Brief Report on Some New Readings and Interpretations from the Field and the Archives
Magnus Källström

16. Type and Origin of Gotlandic Picture Stones’ Raw Material and Their Implications Concerning Craft and Manufacture: A Combined Geological and Archaeological Study
Patrick Hänsel

17. Gotland Type A-B Picture Stones (c. AD 400–700): Investigations on Carving Techniques and Workshop Relations Based on 3D Digitization
Laila Kitzler Åhfeldt

18. Perceptions of a Near and Distant Past: The Reused Picture Stones in Ardre Church
Cecilia Ljung

19. Social Value, Gotlandic Picture Stones and the Future: Insights from Scottish Research, Policy and Practice
Sally M. Foster and Per Widerström