Hogback
A hogback ( German "pig's back" - according to its shape) is a Viking Age carved gravestone that occurs between the 10th and 12th centuries in northern England and typologically different in Scotland and is represented with one specimen each in Ireland and Wales . Hogbacks appear from 920 AD in Northumberland , parallel to the reign of King Gorm in Denmark, but not outside the British Isles .
Shape and decoration
The outline of Hogbacks is based on a Viking-era building type (see e.g. Fyrkat and Trelleborg ), as it has been proven in the Viking castles (e.g. in Trelleborg): curved over the entire length like a pig's back and bulging to the side, in Ship-shaped section, but with a blunt bow and stern .
Some stones have a large bear sculpture at both ends or are decorated with ships of the dead, snakes, other animals, with ring knots or anthropomorphically. The main decorative element are scale-like roof shingles . A hogback recently discovered on the Wirral Peninsula is the smallest example of this type of stone monument. The elaborate decoration is identical to shape types in North Yorkshire.
Distribution and sites
Hogbacks first appeared in the Danelag ( Cumbria and Yorkshire ), but spread only sporadically to Cornwall , Derbyshire , Central Scotland and the Orkney (Deerness Peninsula and in the cemetery of Boniface Church on Papa Westray ) and the Shetlands . In Ireland only the Hogback from Castledermot in County Kildare is known.
Hogbacks almost never found themselves in the original location.
- An in situ hogback is located at Inchcolm Abbey on the Firth of Forth .
- The largest collection (11) is now in the churches of Brampton in Yorkshire and Govan in Glasgow .
- Of the five found on Orkney, only four remain, and these are likely copies of stones found in the south from a much later date.
- A hogback can be found in the cemetery of St Boniface's Church on Papa Westray .
- The fragment of the Deerness Hogback is in the Kirkwall Museum .
Other hogbacks are in Bedale and Repton (Derbyshire), Heysham , (Lancashire), Penrith , Burnsall, Appleby, Hexham Abbey, Sockburn of the Tees, Luss , Govan and Meigle in Scotland.
literature
- RN Bailey: Viking Age Sculpture in Northern England. Collins Archeology, London 1980 ISBN 0-00-216228-8
- Richard Fawcett / David McRoberts / Fiona Stewart: Inchcolm Abbey and Island. HMSO 1989. ISBN 1-900168-51-0
- James T. Lang: The Hogback: a Viking colonial Monument. Anglo-Saxon Studies; 3, Oxford 1984.
- James T. Lang: Hogback monuments of Scotland In: Proceedings o the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland 105 pp. 206-235
- Anna Ritchie: Hogback Gravestones at Govan and beyond. Friends of Govan Old, Glasgow 2004, ISBN 0-9545321-1-2
Individual evidence
- ^ JT Lang: Hogback monuments in Scotland , Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot. 105, 2002, 206
