Half beast–half man: hybrid figures in animal art

This paper seeks to explore ideas about the human-animal relationship prevailing in Scandinavian, pre-Christian society from the perspective of representations in Nordic animal art. After an introduction on art, meaning and context, it focuses on expressions of hybridity. Hybrid motifs are represented in the animal art in complex and dense expressions argued to reveal a basic transformative logic which challenges and transcends settled categories. The investment of creativity in these motifs, an investment which is argued also to be present in the periphrastic style of Old Norse poetry, is taken as an indication of their essentiality in respect of ideas of a transgressive relationship between animals and humans.