A guardiã dos mortos: um estudo do simbolismo religioso da serpente em monumentos da Era Viking (sécs. VIII-XI)

Abstract

The serpent is one of the most common iconographic themes in Scandinavia from the Bronze Age to the Middle Ages. Over thousands of years, this reptile has been engraved, designed, sculpted, carved, painted and forged in the most different supports and materials. Scholars have raised several hypotheses as to why this animal is so abundant in Norse iconography and for so long. However, the purpose of this thesis was to research the symbolisms associated with serpents, having as study period the Viking Age (8th11th centuries), more specifically working with two types of monuments that present serpents images: the hogbacks in 10th century in England, and the runestones of 11th century in Sweden. Starting from the assumption that among the wide range of meanings that the serpents presents, we proposed the thesis that this animal would contain the function of being an apotropaic symbol, having been recorded in these monuments in order to provide some type of protection to the dead and his soul. Based on this hypothesis, we carry out an analysis of the symbolisms that the serpent possessed during the Viking Age, using different types of sources for this, and then carry out the iconographic analysis of the types of monuments, adopting Panofsky's iconological study, Bahn's archaeological study, in addition to methodological suggestions from Pastoureau, Schmitt, Joly and Gombrich. In addition to this iconographic analysis, a quantitative survey of the number of Swedish runestones that have serpents was also carried out, by drawing up graphs, maps and tables with such data. The conclusions reached in this study converge to the existence of a religious symbolism associated with serpents and that they could on occasion have served as apotropaic symbols.