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10 The Jellinge Stone

From prehistoric monument to petrified ‘book’

Abstract

Like the previous chapter, Michelle Brown’s contribution represents an instance of the integration of Christian and pre-Christian Germanic knowledge in the early Middle Ages. Brown explores the context and meaning of the distinctive late-tenth-century rune-stone carved at the royal burial ground of Jellinge in Denmark, viewing the monument as a book in stone and a symbol of conversion and of changing political agendas in Scandinavia in the tenth century. Ranging widely across early medieval art, Brown explains that the stone (like the Auzon/Franks Casket, to which she also alludes) draws upon both Christian and pagan Norse traditions ‘to form a new, integrated iconography that formed a distinctive expression of the Scandinavian experience of cultural synthesis and conversion’.

Abstract

Like the previous chapter, Michelle Brown’s contribution represents an instance of the integration of Christian and pre-Christian Germanic knowledge in the early Middle Ages. Brown explores the context and meaning of the distinctive late-tenth-century rune-stone carved at the royal burial ground of Jellinge in Denmark, viewing the monument as a book in stone and a symbol of conversion and of changing political agendas in Scandinavia in the tenth century. Ranging widely across early medieval art, Brown explains that the stone (like the Auzon/Franks Casket, to which she also alludes) draws upon both Christian and pagan Norse traditions ‘to form a new, integrated iconography that formed a distinctive expression of the Scandinavian experience of cultural synthesis and conversion’.

Chapters in this book

  1. Front matter i
  2. Contents v
  3. List of figures vii
  4. List of tables ix
  5. List of contributors x
  6. List of abbreviations xi
  7. Introduction 1
  8. Part I Anthologies of Knowledge
  9. 1 Dream divination in manuscripts and early printed books 23
  10. 2 Knowledge of the weather in the Middle Ages 53
  11. 3 The Cambridge Songs as anthology of musical knowledge 79
  12. 4 Cristes leorningcnihtas 97
  13. 5 Seeing Jerusalem 116
  14. 6 The emergence of devotion to the name of Jesus in the West 142
  15. 7 ‘Ther are bokes ynowe’ 163
  16. Part III Past and Present
  17. 8 Meet the pagans 185
  18. 9 Reading and writing St Margaret of Scotland from Turgot’s Vita to the Blackadder Prayerbook 210
  19. Part IV Knowledge and Materiality
  20. 10 The Jellinge Stone 235
  21. 11 Mise en page 252
  22. Index 280
Aspects of knowledge
This chapter is in the book Aspects of knowledge
https://doi.org/10.7765/9781526107015.00021

Chapters in this book

  1. Front matter i
  2. Contents v
  3. List of figures vii
  4. List of tables ix
  5. List of contributors x
  6. List of abbreviations xi
  7. Introduction 1
  8. Part I Anthologies of Knowledge
  9. 1 Dream divination in manuscripts and early printed books 23
  10. 2 Knowledge of the weather in the Middle Ages 53
  11. 3 The Cambridge Songs as anthology of musical knowledge 79
  12. 4 Cristes leorningcnihtas 97
  13. 5 Seeing Jerusalem 116
  14. 6 The emergence of devotion to the name of Jesus in the West 142
  15. 7 ‘Ther are bokes ynowe’ 163
  16. Part III Past and Present
  17. 8 Meet the pagans 185
  18. 9 Reading and writing St Margaret of Scotland from Turgot’s Vita to the Blackadder Prayerbook 210
  19. Part IV Knowledge and Materiality
  20. 10 The Jellinge Stone 235
  21. 11 Mise en page 252
  22. Index 280
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