The Mask in the Stone

Viking Age
The Sjellebro Stone/
Sjellebrostenen. 

North of Allingå river stands a special stone. It is easy to recognize from the country road, and when you go up to it in the meadow you can see a carved troll-like image with plaited beard on the flat side of the granite stone. Opposite to the runestones from that time - which were removed from their original place -  this stone still stands in its original place, where it has marked an old crossing point by the river. It was probably coloured in the Viking period, and it was possibly meant as a protection for the wayfarers against evil powers.

The Sjellebro-stone

The stone was found in 1951. It rested with the mask image downwards upon the same place where it had been for time immemorial, until the owner of the meadow sent for the National Museum; he had observed strange lines on the stone. The secret of the stone was revealed, showing a carved male head, a grotesque mask with a pointed chin, large round eyes and a clumpsy nose and a plaited beard. A bogeyman? A troll? Or was it the merman?

Four Prehistoric Roads
The find lead to an archaeological excavation in the meadow, and 4 well-preserved road-layouts from prehistoric time were found. The excavation revealed timber and heavy oak planks, a  road which was placed close to the Sjellebro Inn, plank by plank. It is wellknown that there were skilled engineers in the late prehistorics, and the four uncovered roads  increased the respect. From Iron Age was a paved ford, a solid road of timber from the middle of the 700s and an even better bridge from ab. 1000. The roads have replaced each other through centuries. The meadow was probably under water in winter and sludge has covered the soil. When one road was buried in sludge they built a new one. Other and later roads are seen in the shape of raised and grassgrown  road dams between the mask stone and the present high road dam.

Upon the wooden roads rested the planks of the driving road upon longtimber, which again rested upon cross-timber. For more support were poles driven in or downburied - each was securely strengthened. The poles stood three and three with regular intervals, but they did not support the timber foundation of the road, they supported instead the planks of the roadway. The stone roads,which rested upon layers of timber and branches, were edged with heavy field stones.

Through many centuries there was a road here at Sjellebro, and when one road decayed they built another. The tecnique changed and they built a bridge in 1860. The road was still placed between the mask stone and the present country road, the bridge was oak timber, but in 1928 the last rests of this road disappeared, which at least came from Chr. IV's time. Today the country road is asphalt, the bridge is granite and concrete.

The mask stone belonged presumably to the upper plank road. It was placed in the roadside bringint its message  - whatever it was  - to the wayfarers. 

The Århus-Stone, (Mammen style)

Similar Mask Stones

There were no runes on the Sjellebro stone. Similar mask images are known from other stones, both in Denmark and Sweden, and they all have runes. The most wellknown and the prettiest of all mask stones is the Århus stone with an inscription saying:  "Gunulv og Øgot og Aslak og Rolf rejste denne sten efter deres fælle Ful. Han fandt døden ... da konger kæmpede".

English: Gunnulfr and Eygautr/Auðgautr and Áslakr and Hrólfr raised this stone in memory of Fúl, their partner, who died when kings fought.


Market
It is not that long ago the passage was difficult and dangerous. Sjellebro was then a place where people stopped and met, and the Sjellebro Inn still lies  here, but it is now a boarding school. Far back in time there was a market at Sjellebro which was celebrated up till the 1920s. People traded horses, cattle, pigs and especially sheep. There was entertainment too, like a medival market. The trade was mostly in open air, but there were tents and sheds for the incomers.The Sjellebro Inn and the trading life at Sjellebro might go as far back as to the Viking period.

The Merman, Elsinore

The Merman
At Sjellebro it was in the old days important to beware that there was a merman in the river - and he claimed an annual human sacrifice. Sometimes it took years before accidents happened; once it took 6 years, but in the 7th year a waggon with 7 people crashed and they all perished in the river. The merman had got what belonged to him on back payment.

Various legends and sinister stories went from mouth to mouth through generations. An old woman told in the 1950s what her parents and grandparents had told her, about a married couple, who drowned in the crossing point on their way home from market in Randers. She knew their graves on the church yard in the village Lime.

 Today the country croad at Sjellebro is broad and safe, and the merman has died - or at least disappeared, but both the legends and the finds from the excavations remind about the traffic of the past in the meadow downside Sjellebro Inn, west of the present Randers- Ebeltoft road. The place is quiet. Cars are quickly passing upon the road without noticing the ancient stone in the meadow or the pretty river valley, but the Merman is still waiting down there, speaking his old words: "Time has come - but the man has not yet come....."




Source: 
Danske Fortidsminder, Danmarks Kulturarv Forening; Skalk, nr. 4, 1957, Sjellebrostenen, Georg Kunwald ; Danske Runeindskrifter, Natiolnalmuseet.

The Vikings/Viking Art

The Mammen Style(ab. 950-1000)

The Mammen axe

The Mammen style animal was out of that of the Jellinge style. The two animals can be difficult to tell apart, and during the transitional period it would be a mistake to separate them. The animals' body becomes gradually more substantial with more naturalistic proportions. Its spiral hip joints are increased in size. On the slender body of the Jellinge style animal there was no room for more than a single row of bars or beading.


The Mammen style might be dismissed as little more than a transitional phase which links the Jellinge style with the Ringerike style. The Mammen style seem not to have been in fashion for more than a couple of generations. But it is marked in the history of Viking Art in one important respect. In the Broa and Borre style there was no serious interest in the use of plants or of their leaves or tendrils, in the Jellinge style there was a suggestion of stubby tendrils providing decoration to the animals' bodies. In the Mammen style appears for the first time full use of foliate patterns.

During the ninth and tenth centuries foliate patters were commonly used in Western Europe. The acanthus-leaf patterns were reaching Scandinavia from the ninth century. A small amount of imitation was attempted, but it came to very little. In the later tenth century was a step in this new direction -  one side of the Mammen axe, to which the style owes its name, is entirely decorated in a straggly foliate pattern.  This magnificent iron battle-axe was found at Mammen in Jutland. It is inlaid with silver wires on both sides, one with a foliage pattern, the other with a bird. The bird has a spotted body and its wings and tail are drawn out into elongated, curving tendrils. At the top of the axe is a pair of round eyes above a large nose, beneath are moustaches and a spiral-marked beard.

sword-mount , sigtuna, Sweden

The Bamberg casket

The same human mask looks at us from one of the Mammen-style masterpieces: the Bamberg casket. The Mammen style was well suited for carving, which is seen from the walrus-ivory at this casket. Tradition says that this was the jewel box of Kunigunde, the wife of the German Emperor Henry II.

Source: Moesgård Museum, Århus

Next: The Ringerike style, ab. 980-1080

Viking Fashion

Two women-figures in silver from the Viking period, Sweden.



An experiment! I imagine the woman to the left has a fur collar and fur-pompoms on the red woolen cape, the woman to the right has a cape in gold-brocade.

Clothes for Viking men and women are known from some findings, especially in a tapestry from the Oseberg-ship in Norway. In the male dress the Viking was seen in full coat of mail with a white-painted shield and a spear, in his civilian clothes he also had his indispensable spear. The civilian dress is a coat or pea jacket coming to the middle of the thigh or a little higher; it has long sleeves, maybe a belt , but usually loose-fitting. But it is tailor-made with a dart like in a tight-waisted coat. This coat is also known from Gotland picture-stones, and a coat almost similar is seen on the Lindisfarne reliefs.

There are two kinds of pants on the Oseberg tapestry, either long and tight, or wide and puffy, almost like plus-fours or golf-pants. They are also seen at the Gotland picture-stones. The Arab Ibn Rosta once mentioned in the 10th century these Rus-merchants with their excessive fabric-rich trousers, which were fastened at the knees. At a stone from Gotland two Vikings wear wide trousers , which look as they are supported by an inner "construction" like in a crinoline. Trousers like that were probably made for rich, aristocratic people. The fashion was and is still dictated not only by vanity, but also by a desire to display one's riches.

A third piece of cloth belonging to the male Viking dress was a long cape, which ended in 2 ends, almost reaching the ground and worn in various ways, the ends stood either outh to both sides or front and back. This cape is also known from Gotland. Canute the Great is pictured elegantly dressed in an English manuscript , which shows the king and his queen below hovering angels, placing a large golden cross upon the altar in New Minster in Winchester.

The woman's dress is also shown in the Oseberg tapestry. Furthermore a textile expert Agnes Geijer has studied cloth-rests from the graves at Birka (in Sweden) and has given a valuable contribution to our knowledge about the aristocratic or more wealthy woman's dress in the Viking period. Next to the skin the woman wore a fine pleated shift or shirt, above this the gown, sleeveless and in two parts and hanging in straps in two oval bronze-buckles upon the chest. The gown was foot-long with a train. Above the gown a shorter or longer sleeveless cape. The Viking-lady probably looked impressive with train and an abundance of fabrics, with pearl-necklaces and oval breast-jewelry, from where hang fine chains with scissors, needle-case, knife and keys.

Her hair was tied in a heavy chignon, gathered in a hairnet or under a head-cloth. Young girls might have dressed less conventional, like the girl upon the Oseberg-waggon, who whore a short skirt and long boots. The male Viking was often pictured with a pointed or round-crowned cap in fabric or coat/ leather. The woman also wore a cap or a cap-like head-wear. From the Oseberg-finding were women-shoes in tanned leather.

The Vikings loved luxury.There have been found exquisite dress-finery in their graves, mainly in Birka. Chinese silk, Byzantic and oriental gold-thread embroidery made in the most complicated technique, there are passementeries, heavy gold-brocade and braidings in the best quality. The silk is of course imported, and several other things, but the brocade-work has often an unmistakeable Nordic style.

A Nordic warrior's luxury equipment is seen in a grave from Mammen in Mid Jutland, where the dead was lying with his silver-inlaid war axe and with an eiderdown pillow under his head. Only small pieces of his cape were left with an embroidery in a free pattern. Most well-preserved were his two bracelets in woolen-pad silk, interwoven with gold-thread, and two extremely finely made streamer-shaped silken bands, where the mid fields were sewn with gold thread in a very artificial winding-pattern. Probably were these two bands the warrior's headband, the diadem-like headband, which in the Sagas is known as the "hlad". Even the toughest Viking liked to smarten himself up. According to the Saga the most ferocious of the Njal-sons, Skarphedin, wore his fine silken-hlad on his forehead, when he went to the Thing.

Source: Johannes Brøndsted, "Vikingerne", Gyldendal, 1960.

sketch: gb