Norfolk Pilgrim

I was looking for clues to give me a better understanding of what I think of as "my Hautbois font-base." Detail from Hautbois font-base. Bingo! I think I got the chap!  He turns up on a grit stone tomb slab from beneath York Minster (YorkM: 1993.713) I imagine that it is on the basis of the next picture that the scene depicted is interpreted as slaying of the dragon Fafnir by Sigurd as recorded in the Volsunga Saga. At this alarm bells should ring!  The Volsunga Saga is late 13th C. The earliest German versions of the story, in which Sigurd is called Siegfried,  begin in 12th C!  A parallel story is told in the Anglo Saxon epic,  Beowulf -  a text that J.R.R. Tolkien argued must have come from the Conversion period, perhaps some date close to 700 C.E.. The York sculptures above are dated to the 10th C. Consequently they pre-date Scandinavian visual depictions of the story from 11th C onward by 100 years and the Volsunga Saga ...

It was great to meet an old Norfolk friend, in pride of place, welcoming visitors to the Anglo Saxon Kingdoms Exhibition at  the British Library!  He represents the old East Anglia. East Anglia before Christian missionaries began the conversion in the 7th C. Made of clay, the model of Spong Hill Man forms the stopper of a cremation urn ' Looking at him in a new light, he seemed less like one of the three monkeys, perhaps somewhere between Rodin's Thinker and Edvard Munch's The Scream , as he contemplates the mysteries of life and death.  For such as him St.Felix established a church close to Spong Hill at North Elmham. A church that was to become the centre of the diocese until it transferred to Norwich in 11th C.  Another Norfolk treasure  - the  (the newly acquired)   Whinfarthing Pendant   - was displayed nearby. It dates from a time when the East Anglian elite was beginning to turn towards Christianity. Like S...