Germanic Art – Introduction
July 18, 2018
The Anatomy of Germanic Art
- Introduction
- Early Animal Style
- Style I
- Style II/B
- Style II/C
- Style II/D
Ornamentation adorning mundane and sacred objects is some of the only first-hand expressions surviving to our time created by the people inhabiting Scandinavia in the Germanic Iron Age from approximately 400 to 800 CE. However, it may be challenging to comprehend the meaning and significance of the artworks and even more so to recreate it without a conceptual model of how the individual compositional elements work. This guide is intended as a quick and thorough introduction to help you grasp the essential concepts of the Nordic Germanic Iron Age art styles, their characteristics, and their development over time. Thus acting as a prequel to The Anatomy of Viking Art.
Owing partly to the lack of adequate publicly available image documentation and for didactic reasons, all the illustrations in this guide are new designs based on Germanic Iron Age art principles. They are all based on the work of knowledgeable scholars and my studies of the archaeological artefacts.
It might be helpful to know that the standard naming conventions used for the style periods covered in this guide originate from merging two categorisation systems. In 1904, Bernhard Salin divided the art into three stylistic groups: Style I-III. However, in 1942, Greta Arwidsson divided the art into Vendel Style A-D. Neither of these two categorisation systems is entirely adequate, so they have since been merged into a more accurate system composing the groups: Style I, Style II/B, Style II/C, Style II/D and Style III/E (Broa style, which is covered in The Anatomy of Viking Art), where the Roman numerals refer to Salin’s system, and the letters refer to Arwidsson’s. I have added the category of Early Animal Style, commonly known as Sösdala and Nydam style, covering the proto-styles preceding the style periods mentioned above.
The exact time span of each style period is still debated, so please take the end and start dates specified here with a grain of salt. As each style develops seamlessly into the next, I have added an overlapping period to reflect this reality. However, please note that this is different from how they are typically defined in most academic texts.
The thematic division of the main anatomical characteristics under the headings of shapes, outlines, flow, pattern, composition, and motifs are based mainly on Signe Horn Fuglesang’s work.
The practice of shapeshifting and sorcery in early medieval Scandinavia was inextricably linked to art creation. The sub-chapters on gold bracteates, gold foil figures, helmet plates, etc., highlight and analyse some of the period’s figurative imagery and provide possible frameworks for comprehending the significance of animal ornamentation. Especially Terese Østergaard Pedersen’s excellent model of five visual strategies for image production presented in the gold bracteate chapter is key.
I have made it easy for you to look up any items referenced or historical events mentioned in this guide. In the companion book A Compendium of Germanic Art, you can find images of all examples listed in this guide for easy reference. All the items referenced can also be found online at gelmir.com, where images of the items and links to the online collection they belong to are provided.
This guide is published under the cc-by-nc-sa license, meaning you may share the content as much as you like if you do it without compensation.
I hope this guide will assist you in your study of Germanic Iron Age art.
Enjoy!
Jonas Lau Markussen
