SCANDO-GOTHIC ART IN WESSEX. 3 



The most interesting example of this pagan-Christian 

 overlap is to be seen, in the Stockholm Museum, on a circular 

 font of granite. It belonged to the old church at Ottrava, 

 West Gotland, Sweden, and it dates from the close of the 

 X. century.* Its surface is divided into eight fields, and all 

 but one are carved with Christian subjects, like the crucifixion, 

 while the other represents the god Thor (fig. A). Three 

 stigmata mark his brow, the scars of three wounds inflicted 

 by the flint axe of the Giant Hrungni whom Thor slew. In 

 his left hand, as Ruler of the Waves, the god holds his 

 steering-oar, and with his right hand, guarded by his impene- 

 trable gauntlet, he raises, as the Friend of Man, his 

 omnipotent Hammer over the head of a dragon, Midgarthorm ; 

 Avhile above are seen, in full flight, Fenris-wolf and Garm 

 the Hell-hound. 



It may well be that the inherited faith of Scando-Gothic 

 converts was upheld for a time by the Vulgate translation 

 of the Hebrew Bible,")" by the Gothic version of Ulfilas,J or by 

 that in Anglo-Saxon of ^lfric,§ where they would have read 

 " that the Serpent, more subtil than any beast || beguiled our 

 " first mother and was cursed by a deadly mutual antipathy ; 

 ''' She shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt entrap her 

 " heel."^ And who, more clearly than an artist from Sweden, 



* Ottrava is in the diocese of Skara, where was a great pagan temple, 

 and a Mootplace of the Goths. 



f Anno 405. J Made from a Greek original in the 4th century. 

 § Circa 990. || Gen. iii., 1, 13, 14, 15. 



^ Inimicitias ponam inter te et mulierem et semen tiium 

 Ic sette feondraedene betpeon J^e & jjam pife & J^inum ofspringe 

 et semen illius : Ipsa conieret caput tiium 

 & hire ofspringe : Heo tobryt Jiin lieafod 

 et tu insididberis calcaneo ejus. — Vulgate. 

 & Jiu syryst ongean hyre ho. — .^Ifric's version. 

 Here, the words insidiaberis and syryst mean trap or ensnare : and 

 in the Islandic Bible, ed. 1747, the words are Pu skallt bita hann 

 i heelenn — " thou shalt hite him in the heel," and this indeed, the 

 dragon on the Avebury font seems to be doing (fig. B). 



