Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.1981, Page 280

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Christian sculpture in Norse Shetland
Pictish ‘elephant’. The pair on St Ninian’s Isle post 3 have diverged
a little further, and grown a front leg and two small ears. On post
1 another pair have become quadrupeds.
The relative date of the Skinnet stone does not seem to have been
discussed anywhere. Though sadly battered it can be seen to be an
ambitious monument in low relief, having an unusual cross on each
face covered with elaborate well-designed interlace, and beside them
Pictish symbols and a horse in the best tradition. It can not be very
early nor very late, so a date in the middle of the ninth century
might be guessed, or at any rate substantially later than the Birsay
stone and Papil cross-slab. This is important for St Ninian’s Isle,
because other uncommon details on the shrine-posts are also found
on Skinnet. The three-whorl spiral on top of post 2 is like that on
one of the four roundels set in the angles of the Skinnet’s front cross.
Such roundels are an unusual arrangement, perhaps to be derived
from bosses like those of the great Aberlemno No. 3 cross-slab in
Angus, thought to be early ninth century (Cruden pl. 22). The
equal-armed cross on post 5 has an echo of such bosses, and of
another detail of that and earlier cross-heads in Angus, in that it
has a quadrilobate not circular ring (Stevenson 1955 113) — seen
in Thomas’ pl.v rather than fig. 12. Then small sunk triangles along-
side the spirals which decorate the crescent symbol both on the
Skinnet stone and on the one closely related, possibly earlier, from
Ulbster nearby (ECM III fig. 31), are found more prominently
beside the running spirals on the side of the dragons’ post 3. These
running spirals may be noted as reminiscent of running vine-scroll,
such as that on the edge of the ‘Drosten stone’ at St Vigeans in
Angus (ECM III fig. 252). Similar emphasis on sunk spandrels
might be a clue to the date of the otherwise baffling curvilinear
design deeply cut on a piece of slab from Cunningsburgh south of
Lerwick, unsatisfactorily illustrated in ECM fig. 11. It has on the
back three large strongly incised ogam letters on a vertical stem.
A date not long before that of the St Ninian’s Isle posts, and so
well into the ninth century, might be appropriate for the unique
sculptured side-panel from a shrine, found nearly forty years ago at
Papil (Moar and Stewart 1944, also illustrated in Wainwright 1962).