Sacred Art & Iconography

Snaptun Stone (Moesgaard Museum, near Aarhus)

Norse and Germanic Art

A semi-circular soapstone hearth stone found on a beach near Snaptun, Denmark, carved around 1000 CE from soapstone quarried in Norway or Sweden and held by Moesgaard Museum near Aarhus. The stone was fitted to a smithing hearth, its holes cut to hold and direct a bellows nozzle while sheltering it from the flame, and its carved face carries scarred lips, an image tying the object to Loki through the tale in Skaldskaparmal in which the sons of the dwarf Ivaldi punish him by sewing his mouth shut. The archaeologist Hans Jorgen Madsen called it the most beautifully made hearth stone known, and the carving has been read as connecting Loki to metalworking and the forge. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Facts

Disputed

Depicted Subjectthe subject's own account

Most accounts read the stitched lips as identifying the carved face as Loki, matching the tale in Skaldskaparmal where the sons of the dwarf Ivaldi sew his mouth shut; the stitching is the only feature offered in support of that reading, however, and some specialists in Viking Age art argue the carving could equally be an entangled beast or another ambiguous face of a kind common in Scandinavian art of the period, with no specific tie to any one myth. The Loki reading is the most widely repeated and fits the stone's function as a smithing hearth tied by legend to Loki's own punishment, but it remains an interpretation rather than a settled identification. 1

Physical Form

Mediumthe subject's own account

Soapstone hearth stone, circa 1000 CE 1

Medium (class)the subject's own account

Sculpture 1

Classification

Object Typethe subject's own account

Sculpture or Statuary 1

Connections

Associated With

Denmark

This source names Denmark directly: "stone found on a beach near Snaptun, Denmark, carved around 1000 CE from soapstone quarried in Norway or Sweden and held by Moesgaard Museum near Aarhus."