Urnes Stave Church and Its Global Romanesque Connections

Studies in the Visual Cultures of the Middle Ages VOL. 18 Series Editor: Kathryn A. Smith, New York University Editorial Board: Sharon E. J. Gerstel, University of California, Los Angeles Adam S. Cohen, University of Toronto

U rnes S tave C hurch and its global romanesque connections Edited by Kirk Ambrose, Margrete Syrstad Andås, and Griffin Murray

Contents

Acknowledgments

7

Contributors and Editors

8

Introduction

10

Kirk Ambrose, Margrete Syrstad Andås, and Griffin Murray

List of Illustrations

22

The Plates

27

Part One

Situating Urnes

Chapter 1

Urnes Stave Church: A Monument Frozen in Time?

114

Øystein Ekroll Chapter 2

Urnes: Some Current Research Issues

142

Leif Anker Chapter 3

The Landscape of Urnes: Settlement, Communication, and Resources in the Viking and Early Middle Ages

179

Birgit Maixner

Part Two

The Eleventh-Century Church

Chapter 4

The Decoration of Buildings in the North in the Late Viking Age: A Tale of Bilingualism, Code-Switching, and Diversity?

196

Margrete Syrstad Andås

5

u r n e s s tav e c h u r c h a n d i t s g l o b a l r o m a n e s q u e c o n n e c t i o n s

Chapter 4A Appendix: Alphabetical List of Fragments from Eleventh-Century

229

Decorated Buildings in the North Margrete Syrstad Andås Chapter 5

The European Significance of Urnes: An Insular Perspective on Urnes and the Urnes Style

274

Griffin Murray Chapter 6

“Who is this King of Glory?”: The Religious and Political Context of the Urnes Portal and West Gable

304

Margrete Syrstad Andås

Part 3: The Twelfth-Century Church Chapter 7

Soft Architecture: Textiles in the Urnes Stave Church

332

Ingrid Lunnan Nødseth Chapter 8

Trueing the Capitals at Urnes

356

Kirk Ambrose Chapter 9

Norse Encounters with the Mediterranean and Near Eastern Worlds in the Capitals of Urnes

374

Kjartan Hauglid Chapter 10 Plants, Beasts, and a Barefoot Cleric Elizabeth den Hartog Chapter 11

Monstrosity, Transformation and Conversion: The Program of the Urnes Capitals in Its European Context

398

419

Thomas E. A. Dale

6

Bibliography

448

Index

474

acknowledgments

Acknowledgments

T

h e editor s gr atefully acknow l ed ge the many generous contributions that made this volume possible. Funding for the site seminar at Urnes that resulted in the present publication was provided by UNESCO, the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), and The Directorate for Cultural Heritage, Norway (Riksantikvaren). The NTNU provided funds for the new photography included in this book. The NTNU and the Eugene M. Kayden Award at the University of Colorado Boulder provided funding to assist with publication costs. Thanks are likewise due to the Fortidsminneforeningen (Society for the Preservation of Ancient Norwegian Monuments) for their unflagging support.

Several individuals generously lent their support and expertise to this publication. From the start, Kathryn Smith and Adam S. Cohen expressed enthusiasm for this project and offered invaluable feedback. Linda Safran’s incomparable editorial skills improved the text immeasurably. Leif Anker offered assistance on multiple fronts, and Kjartan Hauglid’s photographs of Urnes make a substantial contribution to our understanding of this remarkable building.

7

introduction

Introduction Kirk Ambrose, Margrete Syrstad Andås, and Griffin Murray

W

ith its late Viking-age ornamentation,1 Urnes is the oldest and best-known stave church in Norway. Yet despite its rich sculptural programs, complex building history, fine medieval furnishings, and UNESCO World Heritage status,2 Urnes has attracted scant scholarly attention beyond Scandinavia.3 Broadly speaking, scholarship to date has examined stave churches primarily through the lens of Nordic artistic traditions. Perhaps the most salient testimony to this approach can be found in the term “Urnes style,” often used to designate the final phase of Viking art. Urnes has quite literally become synonymous with the arts of northern Europe. While in no way denying or diminishing the importance of local and regional traditions, this book examines Urnes, and stave churches more generally, from a global perspective, considering how this monument engaged with international developments from across Europe, the Mediterranean, and western Asia. In adopting this alternative approach, the essays collected here offer the most current research on Urnes, deliberately published in English to reach a broad audience. The aim is to reinvigorate academic interest in and debate on one of the most important churches in the world and in the rich artistic and architectural heritage of northern Europe.

Urnes Stave Church and Its Global Romanesque Connections grew out of a seminar held at Urnes from 22 to 25 September 2018, organized by Margrete Syrstad Andås with support from Riksantikvaren, the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), and UNESCO.4 Participants included archaeologists and art historians from France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, and the United States. Many of the themes discussed in nuce over the course of that seminar appear in more developed form in the following pages. Not only do contributors pursue more traditional iconographic questions regarding the meaning of the Urnes-style imagery on the exterior and the Romanesque sculpture in the interior but they also interrogate questions of the global transmigration of motifs, how visual language developed, and the relationships among different media, as well as how and when the imagery of small-scale objects was transferred to architectural ornamentation. Additional topics include the plan, form, and use of stave churches from liturgical and social perspectives, the relationship between stone and wood as building materials, and the significance of Urnes as a source for the lost wooden religious architectural heritage of Europe.

Building in stone was central to ancient Roman culture, but with the demise of the western empire the significance of wood as a building material increased. Although stave churches have

11

u r n e s s tav e c h u r c h a n d i t s g l o b a l r o m a n e s q u e c o n n e c t i o n s

Fig. I.1. Map of Scandinavia, with medieval bishoprics and Danish sites mentioned in the book. Map: Magnar Mojaren Gran.

principally survived in Norway, along with one example in Sweden, excavations have shown that similar frame constructions with interior posts—whether these posts were set in the earth or rested on a stone still—also existed across northern Europe.5 While most of these buildings are far from Urnes in time, place, and construction techniques, in all likelihood they evince some form of longlasting tradition of decorated wooden buildings, now lost in most places except for remote sites by fjords and in the mountainous regions of Norway. Today, twenty-eight medieval examples survive in Norway largely intact.6 If Urnes is the most lavishly decorated of these extant buildings, portals and other sculptures from a large number of medieval sites are preserved in collections in Bergen, Oslo, Trondheim, and elsewhere, many dating to the twelfth century and suggesting that richly decorated churches were common. From medieval Norway alone, 126 stave church portals are preserved; most of them postdate Urnes. Specific designs, like the Sogn-Valdres composition with confronted dragons spreading their wings and curling their bodies across jambs and lintels, would certainly benefit from cooperative scholarly endeavors like the present volume. New dendrochronological analyses and the study of contemporary material, such as manuscripts, may provide not only

12

u r n e s s tav e c h u r c h a n d i t s g l o b a l r o m a n e s q u e c o n n e c t i o n s

Fig. I.4. Hopperstad church, exterior from the southwest. Photo: © Leif Anker.

artistic developments between urban and rural contexts. Indeed, the provinces could be vibrant centers of innovation.

The remote region of Sogn is an apt example (Figs. I.1–I.2). Dendrochronology has shown that the neighboring stave churches of Urnes (Fig. I.3), Hopperstad (Fig. I.4), and Kaupanger (Fig. I.5) all date to the 1130s,16 but they differ significantly in terms of style, iconography, and overall design.

This demonstrates a greater diversity and tolerance for artistic experimentation than previously assumed. While it appears that the same hand may have worked on the Urnes capitals and the Hopperstad chancel portal,17 the west portals, interiors, and ground plans of the two churches manifest completely different designs and solutions. Moreover, sometime in the first half of the eleventh century a stone church was erected at Hove, only a few hundred meters from Hopperstad.

Three tiny communities along the same fjord in the same period thus display a variety of forms and influences, appropriating elements from contemporary English and Continental sculpture and manuscripts and combining them in various fashions.

16

introduction

Fig. I.5. Kaupanger church interior, view toward the chancel. Photo: © Leif Anker.

The second part of this book, “The Eleventh-Century Church,” examines the fragments from the third Urnes church. Andås contributes two chapters to this section. In her first essay she reviews the fragmentary remains of eleventh-century architectural decoration across the North.

She applies recent dendrochronological studies as a corrective to stylistic analysis, and the picture that emerges is diverse. Although one portal with blossoming vegetation like that in Winchester manuscripts survives, and vine and rope ornaments occur toward the end of the century, most of the exterior fragments are dominated by Urnes-style loopwork. Several examples demonstrate how the ornamentation was draped across the surface with little regard to architectural form in a manner quite different from the Continental Roman heritage. The few remains of interior decoration feature compositional clarity, motifs of regeneration, and sacred figures. This indicates that the people of the North were visually bilingual, practicing a form of code-switching. The chapter is supplemented by an appendix with images and information about the different fragments and groups.

The broader European context of Norwegian stave churches is discussed by Griffin Murray, using

17

u r n e s s tav e c h u r c h a n d i t s g l o b a l r o m a n e s q u e c o n n e c t i o n s

Plate 3. Reused portal on the north exterior wall of the nave

28

u r n e s s tav e c h u r c h

right : Plate 11. Reused east gable. Photo: Birger Linstad and Joppe Christensen in cooperation with Knud J. Krogh, © Riksantikvaren, Directorate for Cultural Heritage, Norway below :

34

Plate 12. Reused west gable

u r n e s s tav e c h u r c h a n d i t s g l o b a l r o m a n e s q u e c o n n e c t i o n s

Plate 30. Interior from west

48

pa rt o n e

|

s i t u at i n g u r n e s

Fig. 2.6. Urnes church, south facade. Drawing: Einar Oscar Schou, colored by Knud J. Krogh in Krogh, Urnesstilens kirke: Forgængeren for den nuværende kirke på Urnes (Oslo, 2011), 14.

152