Jelling style in Viking art

The Jelling style is a Norse art and craft style from the early Viking Age. The style is characterized by markedly ribbon like stylized animal motifs and often band-shaped bodies of animals.

The Jelling style has been dated to the period 925–975, but more recent studies link the style more directly to the reign of Gorm the Old (before 936–c. 958), and directly to the royal workshops. In its early stages it was contemporaneous with the Borr style, and in its later stages contemporaneous with the Mammen style. The style is named after the small town of Jelling in Denmark where the two runestones, the Jelling stones, stand. 

Originally, the entire complex, including the large Jelling stone, was associated with this style, but later studies have categorized the ornamentation on the stone as the mammoth style. The style is characterized by a small silver cup with decoration in the niello technique, which was found in 1820 in a timbered burial chamber in the northern mound at Jelling. Dendrochronology dates the burial site to 958 - 959. The cup has a decoration with a frieze that runs around. The motif is two stylized S-shaped banded animals. The animals' bodies are of equal width and cross each other so that they form loops in the longitudinal axis. Tails, limbs and leaf lobes are intertwined with the bodies. 

Objects decorated in the Jelling style have also been found outside Scandinavia. It is contemporary with the late Carolingian ornamentation of acanthus and plant tendrils, which in many cases appears alongside the Jelling motif on the same objects. The decorative style has three themes:

Figures such as humans and animal figures.

Representations of plants (vines, leaves).

Geometric shapes (circles, triangles, triskele, spirals).

The Jelling style is mainly pure animal ornamentation. It is characterized by highly stylized and often ribbon-shaped animals depicted in profile, often S-shaped snakes or bird-like animals. Birds had been largely absent from Viking Age art after the year 800, but returned around 950. This is probably due to inspiration from Western European Christian art. In this, birds are often included in motifs depicting Paradise. In the Nordic finds there are examples of bird motifs from both the European mainland and the British Isles of Anglo-Saxon origin. 

S-shaped animals are also known from the Anglo-Saxon area. The Danish archaeologist Iben Skibsted Klæsøe has on this basis proposed that the Jelling style's twisted animals in S-shaped arches and depicted in profile are the result of a Norse and Anglo-Saxon mixed style. She believes that the style's origins can be traced to the area in and around Jorvik (today's York) in northern England. This area was at this time the center of a power area in England dominated and partly controlled by Norse men from mainly Denmark and Norway. 

The silver cup excavated in Jelling's northern mound, Skibsted Klæsøe believes, is a sign that a workshop for the production of luxury goods was opened in the 9th century, connected to an international trade network and royal power. She bases her theory on the fact that the cup is shaped according to a continental Western European tradition, while even the decoration is done in the Norse style. 

The Jelling style was widespread outside Scandinavia. Jelling style fittings are found in about the same number in Russia, Poland and Hungary as in Scandinavia. The style was imitated elsewhere in Europe, especially in areas that had contact with Norse peoples, as were the subsequent styles Mammenstilen and Ringerikstilen.

Artifact discovery

Denmark

Silver cup from the king's tomb in Jelling, today at the Danish National Museum, Copenhagen.

Norway

Oval bronze brooch from Morberg in Buskerud, today at the University's Antiquities Collection, Oslo.

Round brooches, Buskerud.

Bronze buckle and sword hilt from finds in Grytafjorden in Haram on Sunnmøre.

Sweden

Silver brooch at Ödeshög in Östergötland.

Tongue-shaped bronze needle, Birka in Uppland.

Pendant from the Vårby treasure, gilt silver, Vårby in Södermanland, today at the Statens Historisches Museum in Stockholm. 

Other countries

Bronze pendant from finds in Gnezdovo near Smolensk in Russia, today at the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Copper alloy sword hilt, York, England, today at the Yorkshire Museum.

Copper alloy sword hilt, Astala in Satakunta, Finland, today at the National Museum of Finland.

Sourced from Wikipedia