In a recent blogpost, I wrote about Old Aker Church and its structure, which is partly comprised of medieval remains and partly comprised of restoration work from the ninteenth and the twentieth centuries. I mentioned, in passing, that one piece of the surviving medieval decoration has survived despite the wear of ages and the tear of restoration, and it is this decoration I present to you here.
The decoration is not easy to find, and when I was at the church with a group of fellow medievalists we arranged a low-key competition to see who could locate it first. In the end, none of us won the prize because we stood in the right spot, making the guide believe we had found it, when in reality our eyes were much higher up.
The decoration is to be found close to the base of a rotund structure on the eastern side of the church. It is difficult to see because the defining feature is nearly worn off, making it hard to notice that a stone band stretching along the base of the structure is in fact meant to be a worm devouring its own tail. It is barely noticeable by the jaws extending below and above the band that serves as its body.
How we should understand this decoration is impossible to say with certainty. Since this is a Norwegian church, it is of course tempting to suggest that it could signify the Midgard serpent, Jörmungandr, who circles the orb of the earth. The ecclesiastical context and the Romanesque style might suggest the worm Ourobouros, the symbol of eternity and endlessness. Yet the fluid boundary between folktales and classical lore, between ecclesiastical style and local expressions, not to mention the Christian influence on what we think of as Norse mythology could perhaps warn us not to think in terms of either/or, but that this worm could be understood as both, perhaps even to the same onlookers.
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