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  • Representing Beasts in Early Medieval England and Scandinavia ed. by Michael D. J. Bintley and Thomas J. T. Williams
  • Verena Höfig
Representing Beasts in Early Medieval England and Scandinavia. Edited by Michael D. J. Bintley and Thomas J. T. Williams. Anglo-Saxon Studies, 29. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 2015. Pp. xii + 295; 39 b/w illustrations; 4 tables. $99.

The volume contains eleven essays with a focus on the representation of animals, beasts, or bestial landscapes in early medieval Scandinavia and England. The [End Page 373] title and scope of the book reflect the emerging interest in ecophilosophies and posthumanism in Medieval Studies, and accordingly, theorists whose works are referenced in the Introduction include Timothy Morton, Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, and Ian Hodder. The essays in the volume, products of a 2011 conference at University College London, include literary and linguistic analyses, along with works focused on art history, onomastics, landscape archaeology, and historical geography.

The first contribution, Noël Adams's "Hunter and Prey in Early Anglo-Saxon Art" (pp. 13–52), surveys the motif of the hunt in Anglo-Saxon animal art and includes a useful overview outlining current trends in scholarship on Germanic animal art. Adams includes well-known objects along with material that resurfaced as recently as 2013. The article demonstrates that while hunting scenes in the early medieval period can be seen as variations of standard motifs from the Classical world, by the middle of the sixth century, hunter and prey images expressed a different worldview as they adorn high-status gear. It is in this context that Adams offers a novel interpretation of the famous purse lid from Sutton Hoo as a depiction of the general narrative of the chase. The plaques depicting a man between two beasts, commonly referenced as wolf-warriors, are, according to Adams, a king and his hunting dogs: "[T]he man on the purse lid is not killing the canines, but rather resting his hands on his companions' paws, signaling not destruction but harmony" (p. 46). This apparent transformation of animal imagery in Anglo-Saxon art was most likely influenced by high-status contacts with the Byzantine Empire.

In "'(Swinger of) the Serpent of Wounds': Swords and Snakes in the Viking Mind" (pp. 53–72), Sue Brunning studies the cognitive link between swords and snakes during the Viking Age. The author examines snakes as base words for sword kennings and discusses archaeological evidence for swords and weapons with serpentine decoration and pattern-welded designs. Her juxtaposition reveals a clear link between swords and snakes, and deftly illustrates the association of snakes with power and wealth (in kennings for arm rings), protection (adorning rune stones and churches), and destruction and chaos. Their ambivalence is what made snakes the appropriate symbolic analogue for swords: both are ambiguous entities as instruments of both power and destruction. The fascinating picture drawn in this article is not yet exhaustive (additional "snake material" from Eddic poetry comes to mind); while Old English terms and text passages are supplied in the original, Old Norse material is unfortunately only cited in translation.

Similarly concerned with snakes and their representation, Victoria Symons's article, "Wreoþenhilt ond wyrmfah: Confronting Serpents in Beowulf and Beyond" (pp. 73–93), takes its point of departure from a scene in Beowulf in which the hero presents a serpent-patterned and rune-inscribed sword hilt to king Hrothgar. Symons's central argument is that the reference to dragons and runes in the description of the sword hilt represents opposing cultural concepts, "with the concealment associated with dragons being countered by the revealing nature of runic letters" (p. 74). In contrast to the discussion of serpents and dragons in the essay preceding hers, Symons sees the symbolic function of dragons based solely in the concealment of treasure, and thus as an inhibitor to social stability guaranteed by the practice of gift giving. In opposition to this concealing function, the author goes to great lengths to argue for a generally revealing nature of runes, which she controversially sees not as signs associated with secrecy but as tools intended for the dissemination of knowledge. In this context, Symons...

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