Loki

I've been to a couple of art exhibitions within the last month, but there's been very little that has grabbed my attention. The one outstanding piece of art that I remember from this summer (apart from cousin Jo's "Goddesses") is a small Viking carving, a thousand years old.

For the third time in a year or so, Moonface and I passed through Kirkby Stephen last month. In the dark red sandstone church, is a small grey stone with a bas-relief carving, worn with age. Only half a metre high, it shows a ram-headed man with chains binding his arms and legs. To the scholars, it shows the Norse god Loki, the embodiment of jokes, cunning and lies.

To me, it represents a man trussed for sacrifice: a real sacrificial lamb or scapegoat. When I first set eyes upon the stone, my blood chilled. It's vile. There are the traces of another figure beneath Loki's feet, a man on his back with bent knees and raised head. Another victim.

I guess that this statue is from a pre-christian temple on the same site, as the whole of this area was settled by the Vikings twelve hundred years ago. The other village names are so Nordic: Keld, Muker, Thwaite. The trussed man haunts me.

:(