At Cross Purposes? Sacred and Secular Figural Iconographies of the High Cross in the Northern Danelaw, c. 850-1000

This thesis examines the sacred and secular figural iconography of Viking-age stone crosses produced between c. 850-1000 in the Northern Danelaw, the area of northern England under Scandinavian economic and political control, in order to address the potential Christian frames of reference of the carvings. This is undertaken in the light of previous iconographic studies, which have focussed primarily on presumed 'pagan' figurations derived from Germanic mythological and heroic subject-matter since the sculptures first came to scholarly attention in the late nineteenth century. Such preoccupations have ignored the nuanced iconographic relationships of the Christian subject-matter preserved on the crosses - the pre-eminent symbol of Christianity - thus preventing any meaningful consideration of contemporary understandings of the monuments' overall iconographic programmes or the various cultural and political contexts within which they were erected. These lacunae will be mitigated here by undertaking a thematic approach to the carvings, which prioritises neither their Christian nor 'pagan' features and addresses the historical contexts of the monuments, including the ongoing phenomena of conversion and Christianisation of the Scandinavian settlers, and the phenomena of tradition and innovation, monumentality, audience encounters and patronage. This enables a thorough engagement with the carefully constructed art-historical and socio-political relationships of the carvings and their iconographic significances, as they might have been understood by contemporary audiences. Close visual analysis of the carvings within their monumental settings is supplemented by consideration of contemporary archaeological and textual sources, including numismatic iconographies, contemporary liturgical rites, vernacular poetry and coeval and regionally-accessible biblical exegesis and homiletic texts, rather than the twelfth- and thirteenth-century Icelandic texts concerning 'pagan' myth and legend usually invoked. Overall, by uncovering such aspects, this thesis provides new insight into the cultural complexities of Christianity in the Northern Danelaw as preserved in the figural carvings, and how these were perceived by contemporary audiences.