Franks Casket

You are looking at one of the most puzzled over artistic products of Early Medieval Britain — it is one panel of a rectangular container known as the Franks Casket. Made in 7th-century Northumbria in northern England, it has a fascinating hodgepodge of Germanic/Celtic/Ancient Roman influences, and scholars still debate the exact meanings of the pictures on it.

We know quite a bit, though: there are runes spelling out Old English and Latin surrounding the images (you can see some in the frames of the panel featured here). Many of the scenes are known — this front side, for instance, has two decidedly different stories. On the right are the three magi of Christian tradition, approaching the Virgin Mary and Christ child with gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. On the left is a scene from an early Germanic legend of Weland the Smith, and here our story gets juicy.

Weland, the story goes, was such a gifted smith that he was kidnapped by an evil king, who sliced his hamstrings in order to maim him and prevent his escape. But Weland got his revenge: he killed the evil king’s children, beheading his son and fashioning a goblet out of the child’s skull, which he later served the king drugged beer from. Weland’s brother then made the two siblings flying capes out of wings which they used to escape. You can see Weland giving the skull goblet and holding his tongs, with a beheaded body below. His brother pulls feathers from birds off to the right.

So what would this have meant to viewers living in northern England in the 600s? Even harder to wrap our heads around — the recipient was probably a king or very important aristocrat, but the casket was probably made in a monastery. Monks and image of the Virgin and Christ make sense, but the bloody legend of Weland the Smith not so much.

My favorite interpretation, by historian Richard Abels, is that the two scenes were intended to go together — they showed two aspects of Anglo-Saxon culture that went hand-in-hand, which are the importance of gift-giving as a sign of good lordship, and the inevitable but just role of vengeance when lordship goes south. Christ the good Lord, Weland the avenger.