Ship flag from Tingelstad

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Drawing of the ship's flag from Tingelstad
The ship's flag
The Tingelstad gamle kirke . For a long time, the ship's flag was visible on its wooden tower.

The ship's flag from Tingelstad ( Norwegian Tingelstad-fløyen ), a place in Innlandet in Norway , dates from the 12th century. It is made of gilded copper sheet and is a post-Viking ship pennant with a dragon-like figure. The weather vane is now in the Kulturhistorisk Museum at the University of Oslo .

Ship flags have the shape of a modified quarter circle and are also known as weather vane ( Norwegian Vejrvane ). It is made of metal ( copper , bronze or gold-plated metal) and therefore preserved specimens of Viking Age heraldry , which were removable and survived in isolated cases on church towers. A rune staff from Bergen in Norway shows the "Laidang" (the fleet), in which only the largest longships a hang-gliding or banner decorated Steven have.

description

At 21.5 cm high and 33 cm long at the top, the Tingelstad ship's flag is the smallest of the four large specimens that have survived. It weighs 2.15 kg and is 2 to 3 mm thick. It was once attached to the wooden tower of the Tingelstad gamle kirke . However, the flag is around 100 years older than the old church in Tingelstad, which makes it possible to use it earlier on a ship. It shows, in addition to the fully plastic, attached figure of a winged mythical creature, the openwork relief of a monster fighting a human. The typical ornamentation in tendril technique winds around the representations. The edge consists of round bars.

The fight scene between the man and the beast has been interpreted differently. In addition to Old Testament interpretations, representations from the Old Norse saga are also possible . While the side of the flag on which the dragon sculpture looks to the right shows the human fighter wrestling with the lion, on the other side you can see that the predator was about to devour a lamb. A text from the History Museum of the University of Oslo explains that it is about the portrayal of the future King David , who frees a sheep from the jaws of a predator, as it is handed down in the Old Testament (1 Sam 17.34 EU ). According to other views, it could also be Samson fighting a lion ( Judgment 14.6  EU ). According to other interpretations, the motif shows Sigurd fighting a wild animal. The plastic figure of a winged dragon on the upper edge of the flag also points to Sigurd .

use

The function of the flags on the Viking ships has not been clarified. The ship's flag from Tingelstad consists mainly of gold-plated copper and was unsuitable as a wind vane both on ships and later on church towers, which experiments with copies have shown. The device for attaching the flag has an angle of 110 ° to the horizontal, so that when it is attached to the stem of a ship, the animal sculpture points exactly forward. This position can be seen in pictures of ships and was also imitated when it was attached to a sloping mast on the church roof. However, it made full rotation of the flag around the axis difficult.

The holes made at different distances on the rounded edge of the flag have been interpreted as markings for measuring the position of the sun. They should be about 4.8 ° apart. However, there is no evidence that the Vikings were aware of such a way of navigating using a quadrant . The shape of the large ship's flags is reminiscent of such a quadrant, but the unequal edges make a calculation difficult. The objects attached to the eyelets, as shown in the drawing on the juniper stick from mountains, were probably used for decoration.

The three other surviving large ship flags come from Söderala and Källunge in Sweden and from Heggen in Norway. They are older than the ship's flag from Tingelstad and show depictions of animals and tendril ornaments in the mummy style . It is completely open whether the flags were forerunners of the "Raven Banner" or ultimately also of the Danebrog , which is considered to be the oldest flag in the world.

The weather vane is now in the Kulturhistorisk Museum at the University of Oslo . During the exhibition “Credo - Christianization of Europe in the Middle Ages”, the ship's flag from Tingelstad was on display in Paderborn from July to November 2013 because of its allegedly Old Testament motif .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b weather vane . In: Herbert Jankuhn, Heinrich Beck et al. (Hrsg.): Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde. Volume 33, De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2006, p. 555
  2. ↑ Jan Bill: Ship graffiti. Vikingeskibs Museet, picture sources, accessed March 18, 2014
  3. ↑ Flemming Rickfors: Det gyldne segl - Vejrfanen. ( Memento from May 25, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Asernes Æt, fynhistorie.dk
  4. ^ A b c Martin Blindheim: De gyldne skipsfløyer fra sen vikingtid. Bruk and technology. In: Viking , Volume 46, 1982, Oslo 1983, pp. 85–111 ( digitized version ( memento from March 18, 2014 in the Internet Archive ))
  5. ↑ Gamle Tingelstad kirke. (PDF) In: Hadeland Folkemuseum og Tingelstad gamle kirke. Håndboka er tilgjengelig på internet via Randsfjordmuseenes hjemmeside. Randsfjordmuseene, 2007, archived from the original on December 11, 2013 ; Retrieved June 22, 2017 (Norwegian).
  6. ↑ Jan Engström & Panu Nykänen: New Interpretations of Viking Age Weathervanes. Fornvännen, 91, 3, pp. 137-142, Stockholm 1996
  7. ^ Arne Emil Christensen: The Viking weathervanes were not navigation instruments. Fornvännen, 93, pp. 202-203, Stockholm 1998
  8. ^ Bishop of Oslo visits Credo exhibition . News edition of the Bonifatiuswerk of October 21, 2013, accessed on March 19, 2014

literature

  • Martin Blindheim: De gyldne skipsfløyer fra sen vikingtid. Bruk and technology. In: Viking 46, 1982, pp. 85-111 ( full text ).
  • David Berg Tuddenham: Gull i stavnen. In: SPOR 23, 45, 2008, pp. 4–7 ( full text ).

Web links