Iranians and Greeks in South Russia - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian ...

THE ANIMAL STYLE 207
work of Salin ; I am acquainted with the articles and books of Goetze
and others on Gothic art ; and I took advantage of a stay, lasting
several months, in Sweden and Norway, to scrutinize the specimens
of the style exhibited in the museums of those countries; I formed
the impression, that from the third or fourth century a.d., this art
was strongly affected by Oriental influence. I regard the Germanic
animal style as a very original development of the South Russian
animal style presenting all the peculiarities of ;
schematizing and geometrizing it. Look at the
that style ;
evolution of
but
the
ornamentation on Scandinavian fibulae. There is the same fondness
for the fanciful animals of the East ; the same use of animal heads,
especially beak and eye of griffin or bird of prey, to form extremities ;
the same treatment of the animal body as an ornamental motive ; the
same dislocation of animal bodies, with forepart turned in one
direction, and hindquarters in the other.
When I had the opportunity of inspecting the Viking funerary
ship, recently discovered at Oseberg near Christiania (pi. XXXII),
and the funeral furniture belonging to it, many features of that rich
and luxurious art brought the Scythian animal style vividly before
my mind. The carver of the sledges and wagons found in the ship
took almost all his motives from the animal style. The animals
which he used to create his Oriental symphonies were not the fauna
of the north—there are no reindeer or elks, and very few deer— : but
mainly the creatures of Oriental fancy, lions, griffins bird-headed or
lion-headed, and sphinxes. When he has a large surface to cover,
he uses an intertexture of various fantastic figures, with curiously
contorted bodies, treated in a purely Oriental manner. Sometimes
this intertexture forms regular palmettes, and just as in the Scythian
animal style, the original animal motives can hardly be made out.
Sometimes the animals, on which the decoration is based, suggest the
fantastic fauna of Scythian, Sarmatian and Siberian art, and of the
objects from Perm. But when the Scandinavian craftsman sets to
work on a separate head, he does his very best, and produces real
gems : but Orient gems. I cannot dwell longer on this topic, but I
am convinced that it is impossible to understand the Scandinavian art
of the first millennium a.d., without previous study of the objects in
the Scythian animal style. There have indeed been scholars, who
have turned their attention to the Scythian monuments, in the hope
that these would shed light on Scandinavian art. But they have never
studied the subject thoroughly : they have been content to select
and analyse a few isolated monuments, and compare them with
Scandinavian works. I am sorry to say that they have done their