Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana. Supplementum - 01.08.1967, Page 142

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2. Romanesque and Gothic up to 1550.
The style one might call European Romanesque is most convincingly represented in Icelandic wood-
work by the carvings on two planks from Laufás near Eyjafjörður and two plank fragments and two boards
from Mælifell in Skagafjörður (figs. 49, 50, 53-56). Here we have a border of circumscribed palmets in
addition to vines, occasionally with animals. The plant forms are distinctively soft and rounded, and the
vine motifs are tangled and interlaced. It has been supposed that these carvings were made about 1260,
a dating which comparison with illuminated Icelandic manuscripts from about that time appears to bear
out.
Probably next in age to the Laufás and Mælifell carvings is the decoration on a plank from Munkaþverá
in Eyjafjörður (fig. 51). The double vine here, which springs up from the mouth of an animal, gives a
completely different effect from the Laufás and Mælifell vines. It is slender, austere, and ribbon-like, and
is used as a frame around scenes with figures. To some extent it is marked by a Gothic sense of style. Com-
parison with two Norwegian stave church portals and with plant forms and animal figures in Icelandic
manuscripts leads this author to the conclusion that it may stem from the period between 1300 and 1350.
Comparison with the illuminations seems also to indicate that a fragment of a chair back from Skaga-
fjörður carved with human and animal figures and a vine of Gothic type (fig. 52) may be from the fourteenth
century, and that the carvings on two pieces of plank from Hof, Kjalarnes (figs. 57 and 58) are from about
1400 or a little later. Each of the latter depicts an animal in relief (taken to be a deer and a lion) in addition
to a palmet and a leaf apex cut off.
The two well-known chairs from Grund in Eyjafjörður (figs. 64 and 65) can be dated fairly exactly
thanks to a letter of assessment dated 1551. The letter informs us that Þórunn, the daughter of Iceland’s
last Catholic bishop, Jón Arason (d. 1550), and the wife of the owner of the Grund estate, had given to
Grund church, among other things, three new carved chairs. Further, one of the chairs bears her name
in runic script. The style of the carvings has been described (by Matthías Þórðarson) as principally
Romanesque, but showing a certain amount of Gothic influence. The author deals with the plant orna-
mentation on the chairs and finds the stylistic definition also applicable to this considered apart. The
small glimpses of the style of the period available in Icelandic book illuminations suggest that the orna-
mentation on the chairs was by no means unique at the time, even though its roots went a long way back.
Concerning style retardation there are indications that it did not affect art in Iceland much more than
in the Scandinavian countries before about 1300. But after the Black Death in Norway of 1349-50, Ice-
land and Norway probably became «backward regionso from the point of view of the history of style, and
it is scarcely an exaggeration to speak of a distinct retardation in Icelandic woodwork around 1400. One
consequence of this is that the dating of Icelandic woodwork on the basis of style must be done with every
reservation.
In order to get a clearer picture of developments in plant ornamentation between 1200 and 1550, the
author deals with Icelandic art in other materials. As expected, it appears that thirteenth century metalwork
is mainly marked by the Romanesque style. A drinking horn and some textiles which probably date from
the fourteenth century give the impression that Gothic forms in addition to the Romanesque were more
frequent at that time than the few preserved wooden articles seemed to suggest. This impression is stronger
still for the period from 1400 to 1550; acquaintance with Gothic plant ornamentation was more general than
the preserved woodwork indicates. In addition to the book illuminations we have textiles which make
this clear. But the remains are too few to enable us to establish whether wood-carvers were more con-
servative than artists in other fields.