Árbók Hins íslenzka fornleifafélags - 01.01.2000, Page 166

170
ARBOK FORNLEIFAFELAGSINS
Summary
Out of His Moutlí Came a Sword
The sword in the article is depicted in an altarpiece in the parish church of Kross,
Landeyjar, on the southern coast of Iceland. A clear inscription in Danish indicates that it
was donated in 1650 by Kláus Eyjólfsson, a prominent farmer and member of the Althing,
and Niels Clemensson, a Danish merchant trading with the Westman Islands. Both of them
had connections with the so-called Turkish Raid in Iceland in 1627, which the author of
the article has extensively researched. That summer corsairs from North Africa raided the
coastal regions of Iceland and abducted some 400 people who were sold into slavery. Kláus
Eyjólfsson wrote a “journalistic” report of the Raid, based on the testimony of eye-
witnesses, immediately after tlie attack. Merchant Cletnensson supervised the recon-
struction of the main church in the Westman Islands after it had been burned down by the
“Turks” in the Raid. The subjects of the altarpiece, a rather crudely rnade triptych, are
Christ in lamentation (left), the Resurrection (middle) and the Vision ofjohn from the
opening of his Apocalypse, in the Book of Revelations (right). The piece was probably
made in a workshop in Denmark.
The subject of the article is to bring together the elements mentioned above to establish
the sources for the altarpiece and to place it in a religious and cultural context in general
and the context of the Turkish Raid in particular. In this efFort, the Vision of John is of
central value. This subject is apparently very rare in Nordic iconography but the altarpiece
in its entirety can nevertheless be identified as a direct copy of the frontispiece to the New
Testament published in Copenhagen in 1647. As to John’s Apocalypse, a survey of Martin
Luther’s exegesis reveals that it was finally accepted by him when he interpreted its main
theses as a description and a prediction of the “Turkish danger” to Christian Europe.
Luther’s comments were still printed in the 1644 Icelandic edition of the Bible. Although it
is hard to prove that the two donators of the altarpiece were aware of every detail of its
religious references, they were preconditioned to relate its main elements.
TheVision ofjohn can also be seen in an altarpiece in Hornslet Church, Jutland, home
church of the Rosenkrantz’s, one of the foremost noble families in Denmark. One of its
members was Governor-General of Iceland at the time of the Turkish Raid in Iceland.
Characteristically, the artistic style of the Kross altarpiece is marked by fluid brushstrokes
and ingenious solutions, while its Rosenkrantz counterpart has the modelled and smooth
surface suggestive of greater diligence and more highly paid painters.