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Abstract: **

Abstract: 'The Vikings had little respect for the dead', concluded excavator Gerhard Bersu after examining the Viking-Age boat-grave on Chapel Hill at Balladoole in 1945 (Bersu and Wilson 1966, 12), one of the most intriguing and most controversial sites in the Isle of Man. Not only was it situated directly on top of earlier Christian burials, but the Viking gravediggers also had torn bones from the old skeletons and scattered them about before sealing the area with a large mound. This frequently was interpreted as proof of religiously motivated terror against the local Christians by the pagans as well as indicative of violent Viking oppression of the native Manx community. Behaviour nowadays considered 'disrespectful', however, could well have had several other and much less confrontational reasons in medieval times, and both the choice of the site for the Viking nobleman's grave and the disturbance of the old bones might have been determined by motives such as social, dynastic, or political considerations, by religious (but non-aggressive) requirements or expectations, by carelessness, greed, or arrogant pride. Using evidence from the skaldic songs and sagas as well as from other archaeological finds, this paper examines the Vikings' spiritual outlook towards death, decay, and the concept of the 'afterlife', their position regarding other religions and their idea of 'piety' and their sense of obligation (or lack of it) to treat the dead with respect, both their own and those of foreigners. It concludes that while as a rule Vikings had a pragmatic attitude towards death and often displayed a certain indifference towards human remains, they generally respected Christian burials and often favoured Christian cemeteries. They therefore are unlikely to have 'desecrated' the dead at Balladoole out of pagan religious zeal or Viking terrorism.

Abstract: Having conquered and settled the Isle of Man in the later ninth century, pagan Vikings gradually became Christian, which included adopting the local custom or erecting memorial stones for their dead and adapting them to their taste. Besides interlace and runic inscriptions, the resulting Scandinavian series of the Manx Crosses frequently features scenes with human figures and animals. Among these animals are a number of birds, many of which can be identified zoologically with some certainty – as ravens, eagles, tits, waterfowl(?), cocks, or doves. The interpretation of the individual images and the identification of their mythological backgrounds, however, have been a consistent challenge to scholarly research. For although taking a place on Christian gravestones right next to the ever-present Christian cross, the old pagan imagery clearly had not been forgotten: the doves of Christ meet Óðinn's ravens. This chapter presents the corpus of bird imagery in the Manx Crosses, discusses their contexts, and examines an iconographic motif in the Spannungsfeld of spiritual reorientation: while there are birds in purely Christian tradition promising salvation as well as birds relating to pagan gods and warrior heroes, there also is evidence that these images were part of a common religious message, indicating the transitional character both of the cross-slabs in particular and of Manx society during the mid-late tenth century in general, when (formerly) pagan Vikings and the Christian Manx mixed.

Abstract: Oval brooches are considered one of the most diagnostic elements of female Viking costume, and they frequently are used to indicate that Scandinavian women accompanied their seafaring menfolk when settling new lands. But while they were known in virtually every other area of Scandinavian settlement in the British Isles, they were missing entirely in the Isle of Man, which presumably was conquered and settled by Hiberno-Vikings after about 870. Their conspicuous absence – and general lack of securely sexed female burials among the Viking graves in Man – gave rise to the assumption that those settlers were all-male groups of warriors, who subsequently married local Christian women, and this formed the basis for far-reaching conclusions regarding the early Viking Age in the Island. This long-lived notion was challenged in 2015, and in December 2018, the discovery of two oval brooches in the Isle of Man confirmed the doubts about the previous conclusions regarding the nature of interethnic social contact on late-ninth-century Man. This paper presents the currently unpublished Manx oval brooches, considers the now-obsolete former interpretations and the objections to them, and discusses the impact of this single new discovery on the scholarly perception of early-Viking-Age Manx history.

Viking Stone Monuments and the Coming of Christianity: Comparing the Manx Crosses of the Scandinavian Series and Gotland's Abschnitt-E Runic Picture Stones.

Abstract: During the early Viking Age, two inland-sea islands produced two sets of stone monuments that are unparalleled in the Viking world: the famous Picture Stones of the Swedish island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea, and the equally remarkable Manx Crosses of the Isle of Man, located in the Irish Sea in the middle of the British Isles. In general, the circumstances of their production are quite different and distinct, yet when studied particularly with the focus on the impact that the arrival of Christianity had on the respective islands' population and their religious and social structures, profound changes in the designs of both groups of sculpture become manifest that – while not based on direct links – reveal similar reactions to both the new religious requirements and changed social and political organisations.

To be published in

Gotlandic Picture Stones in European Contexts and Interdisciplinary Perspectives. The Second Picture Stone Symposion, Visby, 22–26 August 2022, ed. by Sigmund Oehrl (The Archaeology of Northern Europe 7). Turnhout (Brepols), 2026.

Pagan Images for a Christian Message: Tracing Bi-Cultural Viking-Age Iconography in the Irish Sea Region

Abstract: When the Vikings arrived in the Irish Sea and eventually settled along its shores during the late ninth century, they brought with them their pagan religion and its mythology to traditionally Christian surroundings. During a period of spiritual reorientation and syncretism, they adopted and adapted the local custom of erecting Christian grave markers and stone crosses and introduced their own iconography into Irish Sea imagery. Particularly the stone monuments in the Isle of Man (Manx Crosses) and in north-western England offer examples that feature motifs from both pagan Norse mythology and occidental Christian traditions, the most prominent of them being 'Thorvald's Cross-Slab' in Kirk Andreas (Isle of Man) and the High Cross in Gosforth, Cumbria (England). The direct juxtaposition of figural imagery of two religions on one and the same stone is intriguing and raises several questions. The occurrence on these bi-cultural stone monuments of motifs originating not only from different religions, but distinct and far-flung 'countries' creates a contact zone in the Irish Sea region that strongly indicates that an exchange of ideas took place, both before and during the Viking Age, between that area and both the European Continent and the Scandinavian North. To investigate the different iconographical links and influences the clerical designers who created the stones appear to have drawn on, this paper compares Christian images to Continental examples as well as Norse figures to Scandinavian models. At the same time, it explores the intention of the stones' designers in their choice of motifs: whether, for example, they possibly either meant to 'demonise' the figures and deities of the 'heathen Vikings' and educate their flock about their falsehood by depicting them on the stones or instead aimed to convey a common Christian message by combining two 'visual languages', one for a Christian, the other for a pagan audience to understand, in order to facilitate conversion.

To be published in

Viking Connections: Proceedings of the Nineteenth Viking Congress, ed. by Clare Downham, Fiona Edmonds, Nancy Edwards, and David Griffiths. Liverpool (Liverpool University Press), 2026.

Ruins, Theories, and Dead Ends: The Bi-Cultural Viking-Age Farm-Site at the Braaid, Isle of Man.

Abstract: At the settlement site at the Braaid, Isle of Man, the remains of three stone buildings, each in about the same state of ruin, are standing in close proximity to each other. One of them is a roundhouse in native Celtic building tradition, but the two others were built in bowed-wall/rectangular Scandinavian style. This correlation often has been taken was indicative of settlement continuity between the Manx native population and Viking settlers who came to the Island in the late ninth century – whether involving violence or peaceful interaction. A lack of diagnostic archaeological material makes interpretation difficult. This paper examines the farmstead's marginal location in the hills and the available architechtural details in either house types for clues both to the buildings' dates and to the social conditions that prevailed when the intriguing direct juxtaposition of different building styles was created, in order to check current research opinions.

Submitted to be published in Viking and Medieval Scandinavia (2026)

From Piety to Expediency and Heritage: Spoliation and Re-Evaluation of Viking-Age Manx Crosses.

Abstract: The Manx Crosses – a body of (early-)medieval/Viking-Age stone slabs and crosses on the Isle of Man in the Irish Sea – feature a wide variety of Christian and pagan Scandinavian imagery as well as Latin and runic inscriptions. After they went out of style in the eleventh century, there is no record about their fate, and they seemingly were forgotten or ignored for centuries. They only resurfaced in the eighteenth and particularly by the late nineteenth centuries, when local poineering scholar Philip M. C. Kermode began recognising, collecting, protecting, and studying them. As they predominantly were Christian grave stones, many were found in cemeteries, but only a single one had remained in situ; most had been moved, discarded, and/or reused in the meantime, often, as far as can be ascertained, as building material in both sacral and secular contexts. Hardly ever, however, has been recorded when, by whom, or why this had been done. This chapter investigates the secondary use of these medieval monuments, searches for examples and patterns as well as for religious, social, or practical reasons for the stones' spoliation, and considers evidence of nineteenth- and twentieth-century folkloristic attitudes and superstitions towards the stones.

To be published in

Beyond Spolia. A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Re-Used Decorated Stones with a Focus on Atlantic Europe and Scandinavia, ed. by Marta Diaz-Guardamino, Andrew Jones, Sigmund Oehrl, and Dirk H. Steinforth. 

Quid significet quod alphabetum scribit? – The Abecedaria of Iuan the Priest in the Stone Slab MM 145 at Maughold, Isle of Man, in their Contexts. (in preparation)

The Burton-in-Kendal stone revisited. (in preparation)

For all to see, and yet forgotten: (re)discovering the medieval carved stone panel of St Leonard & St Mary RC Church, New Malton, North Yorkshire. (in preparation)