Essays on the depiction of animals, birds and insects in early medieval
material culture, from texts to carvings to the landscape itself.
For people in the early Middle Ages, the earth, air, water and ether
teemed with other beings. Some of these were sentient creatures that
swam, flew, slithered or stalked through the same environments inhabited
by their human contemporaries. Others were objects that a modern
beholder would be unlikely to think of as living things, but could yet
be considered to possess a vitality that rendered them potent. Still
others were things half glimpsed on a dark night or seen only in the
mind's eye; strange beasts that haunted dreams and visions or inhabited
exotic lands beyond the compass of everyday knowledge.
This book discusses the various ways in which the early English and
Scandinavians thought about and represented these other inhabitants of
their world, and considers the multi-faceted nature of the relationship
between people and beasts. Drawing on the evidence of material culture,
art, language, literature, place-names and landscapes, the studies
presented here reveal a world where the boundaries between humans,
animals, monsters and objects were blurred and often permeable, and
where to represent the bestial could be to holda mirror to the self.
MICHAEL D.J. BINTLEY is Lecturer in Early Medieval Literature and
Culture at Birkbeck, University of London; THOMAS WILLIAMS is a former
curator of Early Medieval Coins at the British Museum.
Contributors: Noël Adams, John Baker, Michael D. J. Bintley, Sue
Brunning, László Sándor Chardonnens, Della Hooke, Eric Lacey, Richard
North, Marijane Osborn, Victoria Symons, Thomas J. Williams
