Árbók Hins íslenzka fornleifafélags - 01.01.1970, Page 23

TÁ-BAGALL FRA ÞINGVÖLL]M
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SUMMARY
A Tau Crosier from Iceland.
In 1957 a bronze object was found some 50 cm below the surface of the home-
field at Þingvellir, a farm situated at the ancient meeting-place of the Icelandic
parliament. The object is identified by the present author as a tau cross or tau
crosier. It consists of a socket — in which the top end of a staff of cornel wood
is still preserved —• with two symmetrically placed crooks, all cast of bronze in
one piece. The metal is now oxidized to a dark green and there are no traces of
gilding. On both sides of the socket there are engraved lines running through
loops of the well-known Ringerike or runestone kind. The crooks are termi-
nated by animal heads typical of the Urnes style, with an elongated pointed eye
filling almost all the open space of the head, long twisted lip-lappets and degen-
erate head-lappets. The object must certainly be grouped with the monuments of
the Urnes style, and consequently it should very likely be dated to the third
quarter of the eleventh century, a period roughly coinciding with the term of
office of the first bishop of Iceland, Bishop ísleifr Gizurarson (1056—1080). If
this object really is a bishop’s staff, as suggested by the author, it could possibly
have belonged to Bishop ísleifr. It might also have been in the possession of a
foreign missionary bishop or an itinerant bishop, as both kinds of clerics are
known to have been in Iceland in the eleventh century. At any rate this unique
three-dimensional, fully developed work in the Urnes style seems to show what
a pastoral staff could look like in early Christian times in the Northern coun-
tries.