Christian sculpture in Norse Shetland

Abstract

This paper suggests that there is acceptable evidence for the continuation of Christian sculpture and Pictish writing in Shetland in the period 800—1050, which Professor Thomas did not consider in his discussion of the finds from St Ninian's Isle and Papil. Following her more recent excavations in Orkney Dr A Ritchie has reopened the questions of cultural and physical survival of the pre-Norse population in the northern isles of Britain, and of assimilation. A tenthcentury date has long been proposed for the Bressay cross-slab with its Pictish inscription in ogam letters, which includes two Gaelic words, and one Norse, and has uniquely : between the words as in runes. A fragment from Papil which clearly resembles tombstones at Iona should also belong to that century. So does the knot-design reconstructed in fig. 1, for it is only known otherwise from a group of monuments in Scandinavian northern England. Its use of little bosses is a link with the same area. Some ogam letters also survive on this stone. 
 Features of the sculpture from St Ninian's Isle are reconsídered, and arguments put for a date no earlier than mid-ninth century rather than before 800, by comparison with Pictish sculpture in east-central Scotland and in Caithness. Although the fine processional scene from Papil is older, it may also belong to the ninth century. The writer agrees with Professor Thomas that, despite the representation of a monumental cross, it too is in the east-coast tradition rather than influenced direct from Iona.