Transformations in Viking Age Animal Art. About visual poetry on female brooches

PhD candidate Michael Neiß (Uppsala University):

"Ancient pictures are not random products – they were created for conveying messages. This is especially true in the oral culture of the Viking Age. Here, pictures often occur as Animal Art. The focal point of my work is a special kind of female dress adornment, characterized by a very dramatic design. These 'baroque' shaped brooches are best likened to interactive sculptures that change shape as the viewer changes perspective. They are often cluttered with puzzle pictures, i.e. ambiguous compositions containing many motifs. But due to the limitations of our visual system, our perception oscillates between alternative readings. Within Viking Age studies, puzzle pictures have not yet received wider attention: First, the structure of Animal Art is not consistent with our modern expectations of 'meaningful' visual art. Second, archaeology has traditionally taken a skeptical view on iconographic approaches. It was only recently that we became aware of the possibility that Animal Art might be more than a mere dating resource. In fact, depending on the individual beholder, the same composition might either work as décor, symbol, narrative, or as multimodal text. In conclusion, much remains to be done in order to do justice to 'baroque' shaped brooches. My typological study on baroque shaped brooches reveals that the smith's way of creating puzzle pictures resembles the scald's way of composing poems. As a long-term result, I am able to identify several unknown parallels between Viking Age poetry and Animal Art, i.e. on a contextual, on a cognitive and on a pictorial level."

October 4, 2019, from 10:45–11:45 at Jakobi 2-213