Abstract

On over 130 Swedish rune-stones of the Viking period, a depiction of a quadruped appears beside the memorial inscription. The wild animal is a lion or a wolf that is sometimes bound.Sigmund Oehrlassociates the motif with the binding of the wolf Fenrir and the banishment of the Hellhound by Christ and evaluates it against the background of the expectation of the end of the world and the strategy of missions. For the first time this volume collects, describes and compares pictorial and written sources which illuminate old Germanic conceptions of the binding of animals."