Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.1981, Blaðsíða 281
Christian sculpture in Norse Shetland
289
It represents, in skilful two-plane low relief, a procession of cowled
clerics, one riding and four on foot holding crooks, the last of them
also carrying a satchel round his neck like those on the older Papil
stone. Ahead of them is shown a monumental cross on a square base.
Its large head has no hollow armpits nor a ‘halo’ ring, and so is
unlike the Irish high-crosses and most of those of the Iona-school.
It shares with the latter the slightly concave arms (an Anglian
feature) and a central boss, here surrounded by simplified scrolls.
But if, as is likely, the artistic influenoe on Shetland was still from
the east coast, where there was also a tradition of sculptured scenes
in Angus and Perthshire, two fragments of free-standing crosses at
St Vigeans and Edzell show that something of the kind was
occasionally being erected there early in the ninth century (Steven-
son 1959).4) The heavy spirals in relief below the Papil procession,
which Thomas imaginatively suggests may represent the sea, are
elaborated from C-shaped scrolls not running spirals, but otherwise
are very comparable to the paired spirals incised on St Ninian’s Isle
post 1. Both seem to reflect the general coarsening that is to be seen
in southern Pictish art after the early ninth century, which had been
the period of its finest developments starting with the St Andrews
shrine.
One may conclude, therefore, that there were in Shetland active
Christians erecting sculptured monuments in the tenth century, and
most probably about the middle and end of the ninth century as
well, all while the Papil cross-slab was still standing and providing
inspiration. Artistic, and so probably also ecclesiastical, links with
Pictland were first maintained or renewed, but later, after the Picts
íost power to the Scots, were supplemented or possibly replaced by
contact both with Iona and with Anglo-Scandinavian Northumbria.
NOTES
l) Some of the sketches on slate from the early Norse levels at Jarlshof,
Shetland, werc more problably drawn by a native rather than by a Norseman,
notably the man’s head with a row of curls only paralleled by the chief on the
Birsay stone.