The Stone Sculpture of Anglo-Scandinavian Yorkshire in its Landscape Context

This thesis considers the Anglo-Scandinavian stone sculpture produced in Yorkshire in the
ninth to eleventh centuries. Six sculpture-producing sites are examined in detail: York Minster,
Nunburnholme, Kirkleavington, Brompton, the related sites at Otley and Weston and Leeds.
The landscape setting of each site is considered, looking back to the pre-historic and Roman as
well as Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Scandinavian contexts, and the sculpture analysed within this
landscape setting. For a number of sites, including Nunburnholme and Leeds, this is the first
sustained analysis of the sculpture with reference to its landscape setting.
This methodology leads to a number of conclusions concerning the sculptural material and
how it is best studied. The importance of studying the carvings with reference to their
landscape settings is demonstrated. Within this context the Anglo-Scandinavian sculpture of
Yorkshire is shown to be an innovative and hybrid body of work, not merely an ephemeral and
relatively minor variant of the dominant Anglian sculptural tradition. It is also demonstrated
from the analysis of a number of the sites that the patrons and carvers of Anglo-Scandinavian
stone sculpture were consistently using these monuments to make statements about their
power in the landscape, from which the stone itself was derived. The sites and sculpture
considered in this thesis also show that the region’s stone sculpture was not a static body of
work, but one which was repeatedly refashioned and given new meanings by successive waves
of settlement and colonisation.