There is no evidence for the presence of secular or professional artists in early medieval England prior to the late tenth or eleventh century, though it is certainly possible that they existed. It is likely that this began to change during the Anglo-Scandinavian period as secular patronage and use of sculpture, along with scenes from Scandinavian myths and religions, became more common. No names of artists or evidence for secular workshops survive, so this remains speculative, but there is increasing evidence for more, and more varied, schools of sculpture.
1 For example, the ‘Brompton School’ that specialised in the production of the funerary or memorial hogback monuments. See images and discussion on the Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture website: http://www.ascorpus.ac.uk/catvol6.php.Figures 3–6 The Leeds Cross. Left to right: face A; face C; face D; face B. Photos, Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture. Photographers K. Jukes and D. Craig.
The tenth-century Leeds Cross now located in Leeds Minster (formerly Leeds parish church) in the city centre near the markets could hardly be described as anything like as lush or intricately decorated or sophisticated as the Ruthwell Cross, even if it did carry some of the same general symbolism. The Leeds Cross (Figs. 3–4) is the work of an Anglo-Scandinavian sculptor (or sculptors) and was once part of a group of perhaps six eighth- to tenth-century crosses on the site. It is heavily damaged and yet more heavily restored making precise identification of some of the figures carved on the broad sides of its shaft impossible. One side carries haloed figures one possibly holding a book, and an image of Weland the Smith in his flying machine; the other carries panels of knot-work ornament, an angel (probably), and a man with a sword and eagle. The two narrow sides are carved with vine-scroll and knotwork patterns. Damage and restoration make the cross difficult to read now, but even in its original form it would have been odd, quirky, a bit clumsy perhaps. Nevertheless, it gains its power in part from some of the same shape-shifting and puzzling patterns that characterise the earlier and more famous monuments, but exactly how it takes or shifts shape is equally hard to pinpoint.
On one of the narrow sides of the shaft, the tendrils of the vine-scroll elegantly unfurl themselves from the tightly coiled spirals near the base of the cross into a sinuous serpentine line at the top of the shaft (Fig. 5). The movement, rhythm, and change of form suggest the growth of an actual plant unfurling from a shoot and growing upwards towards the sun. On one level it, like the Ruthwell vine, draws attention to the vertical line of the cross, which points directly from the earth towards heaven and salvation. On another level it slows and complicates that movement upwards, inviting the eye to take in the lines and patterns of its leaves, some of which curl in different directions.
2 It should be noted that the middle section of this face of the cross is missing and that the vines above and below the missing section are of different forms. They have been reconstructed as one continuous vine-scroll, but this may not have been the case originally. It suggests the movement through time of a living thing, which is in keeping with the general symbolism of the cross as a tree-of-life. But curiously this vine grows not from the ground, as it appears to do on other monuments, the vine-scrolls of the Bewcastle and Ruthwell crosses being the most famous examples, but from the raised border, or perhaps from behind the raised border near the base of the shaft. It is actually cut off from the ground by two spiral patterns, which may once have had a recognised meaning, which may have been intended to echo the inward curling spirals at the base of the opposite face of the shaft, or which may simply have been space fillers. Whatever their intended meaning or function, if any, they present the viewer with a puzzle that seemingly cannot be solved. They seem to grow inward from the raised border as does the vine above them. Are they bits of plant-scroll, or perhaps roots? If so, where do they come from? Scholars know that the Vikings, like their English counterparts, did have a sense of stone as a living thing that was capable of preserving memory, as so many of the rune-stones that survive in the Scandinavian countries not only mention but foreground the stone (Old Norse
sten) from which they are made, rather than the way in which it has been shaped in their memorial inscriptions. Perhaps, then, the stone of the Leeds Cross was perceived as materially active, as giving birth to the spiritual in a more literal way than that of its earlier English predecessors. It is possible to find perceptions of stone as a sacred and living substance elsewhere in Anglo-Scandinavian sculpture, in the bulbous roots that appear to grow out and down into the ground from the middle of the shaft of the tenth-century cross at Dearham (Cumbria), for example, which has been interpreted as a possible reference to Yggdrasil, the cosmic tree of Norse mythology.
3 Lilla Kopár, Gods and Settlers: The Iconography of Norse Mythology in Anglo-Scandinavian Sculpture (Turnhout: Brepols, 2012), pp. 124–25. Notably, it is important here that, in contrast to the vine-scroll at Ruthwell, which appears to grow straight out of the ground, this cross plunges its roots down into the ground as if seeking sustenance for its stone.
4 The Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture: http://www.ascorpus.ac.uk/catvol2.php?pageNum_urls=80.On the opposite side of the shaft of the Leeds cross any sense of organic growth is broken down (Fig. 6). Here the ornament is divided into, or confined within, at least two panels, and the interlace patterns of the lowest panel knot back down upon themselves, countering or redirecting the upward movement of the cross. It remains earthbound, locked within its stone panels. At the top of this face of the shaft, however, a section of asymmetrical knot-work suddenly changes form, one strand seemingly breaking free of its tangles and morphing into a vine similar to that of the opposite face, but here filled with circular fruits. The shapes of its fruits and leaves are akin to those of the elongated oval and circular shapes of the knot-work in the panels below. Or does this small section of vine-scroll actually emerge not from the knot-work but rather from the border of the shaft as it does on the opposite face of the cross? The damage and missing pieces at this point make it impossible to be certain, but vine-scroll and geometric patterns are combined – the one seeming to grow from or incorporate the other – on the narrow sides of a mid to late ninth-century cross at nearby Ilkley.
5 See: The Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture: http://www.ascorpus.ac.uk/catvol8.php?pageNum_urls=111. Whatever the case, the ornament on this side of the Leeds cross presents the eye with fragmentation, separation, and difference. It is insistently stone, but with a hidden life concealed within that stone.
A large portion of the decoration on the Leeds Cross consists of knots; they appear in almost every panel.
6 A complete set of images of the cross is available at: http://www.ascorpus.ac.uk/catvol8.php?pageNum_urls=150&totalRows_urls=249. They are literally composed of threads that help to tie the panels together or entangle the figures within them, but they are also impossible knots – like so much knot-work and interlacing, made up of a single thread that could never actually be knotted in the way depicted, or that cannot be untangled, or of multiple threads that disappear into each other. The Old English word
cnotta, knot (cognate with Old Norse
knútr), had a remarkably wide semantic range, one that has never been explored fully. It could mean ‘to tie, bind, fasten, or knit’. It could mean ‘marriage’, as in ‘to tie the knot’. It could mean ‘to snare or entangle’, and it could also mean a problem or a puzzle, a knotty question.
Cnotta could be duplicitous, or at best ambiguous in its meaning. Knots could tie things together, but they could also separate or place things in a state of enmity. They could ensnare or entrap, but they could also intrigue and enchant. They could create mysteries or riddles that demanded solving or untangling,
7 See: Antonette di Paolo Healey, et al., Dictionary of Old English (Toronto, ongoing); and Bosworth-Toller, s.v. ‘cnotta’. in effect becoming a form of craft. In the case of the Leeds Cross, the ornamental patterns both keep things apart – they appear in discrete panels that intervene between the two broad faces and separate at least some of the figural panels from each other – and they tie things together, creating repeated patterns that relate discrete panels to each other. The majority of the carvings that cover the cross consist of ornament, and ornament in the form of knotted patterns spills over into most of the figural panels. Together and apart, it is these patterns that keep the eye moving from one panel to another, up, down, and around the monument. The curving lines of the knots that bind Weland into his flying machine in the bottom panel of face C are echoed in the knotted hair of the figure in the panel above him. The pointed corners of the knot-work in the panel second from the bottom on the opposite face are repeated in the knot-work suspended from the sword held by the figure in the panel beneath it. The overlapping patterns of the circular knot near the top of this same face are mirrored in the way in which the hair and halo of the figure in the corresponding position on the opposite side of the shaft are woven together, and so forth.
Figure 7 The Leeds Cross, Weland the Smith, face C. Photo, Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture. Photographers K. Jukes and D. Craig.
The most intriguing knots are arguably those of the Weland the Smith scene carved at the base of face C of the cross (Fig. 7), an image of the ultimate craftsman that is clearly central to the meaning of the cross as a whole. This is a panel in which the multiple meanings of Old English
cnotta converge. It is also a panel that tells a story of enchantment and of the ability of craft to enchant. The panel is both complex in its iconography and heavily damaged, resulting in some iconographic questions of necessity remaining unanswered. It thus presents, at a very basic level, a knotty problem. There is no doubt that this is Weland the Smith as his smith’s tools are arranged neatly around his feet, and he is depicted rising into the air, bound up in (or knotted into, or entangled in) his flying machine. But somewhat unusually he is depicted clutching a woman lying horizontally across the top of the panel by the train of her skirt and by the knotted ponytail of her hair (on whom see below). Amongst surviving Anglo-Scandinavian sculptures, this iconography is unique to Yorkshire, appearing also on a ninth- or tenth-century fragment from Sherburn.
8 The stone is Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture Sherburn 3: http://www.ascorpus.ac.uk/catvol3.php?pageNum_urls=113&totalRows_urls=288. It may be derived from (and it is clearly related to) images that appear on Gotland picture stones, such as the eighth-century Lärbro Stora Hammars III – although, in that image, the woman stands facing the flying machine and she is neither gripped by nor entangled with Weland – or the eighth- to tenth-century Ardre VIII, on which the woman stands upright, apparently leading a horizontal Weland out of his smithy.
9 For a discussion of the Yorkshire and Gotland images see: James T. Lang, ‘Sigurd Fafnesbane of Vølund Smed’, Den Ikonographiske Post 74.3 (1974): 13–24; James T. Lang, ‘Sigurd and Weland in pre-Conquest Carving from Northern England’, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal 48 (1976): 83–94.On both the Leeds and Sherburn carvings, the woman is also gripped around her waist by the beak of a large bird that forms part of the flying machine, so she is clearly meant to be understood as entangled in or a part of it. This is not part of the traditional Weland story. It has been suggested that the woman in the Leeds panel could be Beaduhild and that the scene of the rape and Weland’s subsequent flight have been conflated,
10 James T. Lang, ed., York and Eastern Yorkshire, Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture 3 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 203. but this reading is problematic because of the way in which the woman is locked into the machine, as well as the ornament that helps to entangle her in it. In the story, Beaduhild is left behind. Alternatively, the woman could be a Valkyrie carrying Weland up to Valhalla. She is depicted with the Valkyrie’s traditional attributes of long knotted ponytail and drinking horn – at least she appears to be holding a drinking horn. A Valkyrie holding a drinking horn does stand before the flying figure on the Lärbro Stora Hammars III stone. Or she could be Weland’s lost wife, a Valkyrie the smith first encountered in her swan-maiden form. Weland’s wife eventually abandons him, leaving him with a ring that Nitthad takes from him and gives to Beaduhild when Weland is captured. In the
Vôlundarkviða, Weland expects his wife to return, and he is waiting for her at the time of his capture. The flights of wife and husband might, then, have been intertwined, bound together through both the marriage knot and the elegantly carved knots of this panel.
In the end, we can only speculate as to whom the woman might be, but whatever her identity, the knot patterns in the panel both bind the two figures to each other and keep them apart. Weland grips the woman above his head, and both the curls of her hair and train and the positioning of his arms mirror the curling knots that bind him in the flying machine. It may well be that she is pulling him upwards, perhaps rescuing him, but it is also possible that he is pulling her downwards. Whatever the case, they are bound to each other visually, and thus must be read as tied to each other within the narrative depicted. If the woman is Beaduhild, the knots and grips ensnare and entrap; if she is the swan-maiden wife, they connect or bind perhaps less violently. The ambiguity of both the visual composition and the semantic range of cnotta allow for either or both readings. Regardless of the woman’s identity and the specifics of the action depicted, however, both the story and panel have at their heart the craft that allows not only one thing to become another, but one thing to be concealed within another: captivating jewels, marvellous ornaments made from human bones and eyes, and the miraculous flying machine that allows man to become bird. (There are also the shape-shifting swan maidens, but that is a craft of a different order.) Nothing is as it seems, and everything is changing form. The way in which the ornamental knot-work and entangled patterns of the figures and objects are depicted help express the fluid yet complicated movement of forms and narrative.
On the Leeds Cross, design is a puzzle, content – exactly what is depicted – is often a puzzle, and the meaning of both individual panels and the cross as a whole remain a puzzle. The cross seems likely to have been a memorial, possibly to the swordsman carved in the corresponding position to Weland on the opposite face of the cross. It may have been meant to keep his memory alive here on earth. As with the letters of the Pater Noster in Solomon and Saturn, this stone, these carvings, and these designs are weapons or tools of a sort, seemingly meant to ensure that life continued elsewhere on another plane, and elsewhere in the memories of others. In the relationship of images like the vine-scroll and knot-work of the narrow sides, or the knot-work of the Weland panel, craft is concealed in the unlocatable mystery of one form morphing into or emerging from another, but simultaneously revealed in the fact that one can notice the change in pattern. The changes are not natural or organic, someone’s hand made them. There is life, or at least artistic agency, within the stone, it grows or produces things. Knots, too, become living forms. The wings of dead birds are revivified as the hybrid bird-man-machine figure (or in this case the hybrid bird-man-machine-woman figure) that Weland becomes. The images and patterns struggle to break free from the earth and stone at the same time that the craft of the artist binds them to and sometimes conceals their roots within them. The viewer is very aware of the hand of the artist in the crafting of this sculpture. This is not just because the artist seems less skilled than their Ruthwell counterpart; it is also because there is a greater interest in the display of artistic creativity and skill. The repetition of knots and patterns draws our attention to the fact that these are knots and patterns. They are not laid out and carved with the geometrical exactitude and precision of, say, the interlace designs on the Bewcastle Cross; they show the work of the hand and the marks of the chisel. Interestingly, the sections restored in the nineteenth century display a smoothness and regularity of carving that the original sections do not possess. In the Weland panel, damaged as it is, the curls and knots that attach Weland to his flying machine are repeated in the curls of the hair and train of the woman above them. These are design elements whose sole purpose is to unify a composition and add visual interest or signs of artistry. Moreover, in this panel the craftsman is shown with his tools arranged around his feet, drawing attention to the fact that the flying machine, for all its marvellousness, is the work of his own hands. Weland may not be a portrait of the artist in the modern sense, but as a master-craftsman caught up in the thing he has crafted, he is a representation of that artist’s craft and being. The patterns and forms that seem to grow out of the stone borders on the narrow sides focus our attention on the fact that this is stone. It may be living stone, but it is still stone, and the sculpture a collaboration between the stone from which it is worked and the hand of the artist who worked it. The effect is similar to that which Seth Lerer has described in the poem Daniel which:
takes writing as its theme, [and] it does so to compare its hero and the poet. At the moment of the prophet’s exercise of his interpretive ability – his reading of the dreams or his decipherment of the handwriting – the narrator displays his own rhetorical skills [his own craft], as elaborate patterns of interlace, repetition, and verbal allusion call attention to his own command of traditions of vernacular verse.
11 Seth Lerer, Literacy and Power in Anglo-Saxon Literature (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991), p. 27.It may be that, with the growth of sculptural workshops, the increase in secular patronage, and the new variety and groupings of sculptural monuments that began to appear in the tenth and eleventh centuries, sculptors became more comfortable in asserting their presence. Certainly, secular patrons and monuments did not
require the
same humility from artists or need the same construction of communal identities that monastic patrons and monuments like the Ruthwell Cross required, because so many of these later sculptures have been identified as being personal expressions of land, power, and identity that worked between cultures and religions.
12 See further: Richard N. Bailey, Viking Age Sculpture in Northern England (London: Collins, 1980). While earlier monuments do sometimes depict the names or images of individual patrons and/or those commemorated – the eighth-century Bewcastle Cross, for example – they are not common. Images of secular patrons (and/or those commemorated) become far more common in the tenth century and the little figure seated with his sword at the bottom of the Leeds Cross shaft opposite the Weland panel is an excellent example. It is a portrait of a man’s social status and position rather than a likeness, and what is being suggested here is that the Weland panel can be read alongside it as a portrait of the skill and ingenuity of the sculptor, making the craftsperson’s presence apparent through the marks and signs of their profession even while their actual names are concealed. The image also tells us that the patron could afford to employ such a skilled craftsperson.