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Sigurd, son of Sigmund, was asked by Regin to kill the dragon Fafnir who was guarding a hoard of treasure. And if you are thinking that Tolkien must have read this saga you would be totally correct! Regin and his brother had killed their own father to obtain the treasure. Regin’s brother was none other than Fafnir who had transformed himself into a dragon to dispossess Regin. Regin was disguised as a smith and he offered to re-forge the sword that had belonged to Sigurd’s father, Sigmund who had received it from Odin. No ordinary sword, then. Armed with the formidable weapon Sigurd duly slew Fafnir. Regin, obviously a man of much charm, then asked Sigurd to roast the unfortunate Fafnir’s heart so he could eat it. Sigurd accidentally burnt his thumb during the cooking process (no oven gloves in those days, you see). Sigurd did what anyone in his position would have done and promptly stuck his sore thumb in his gob. There was a speck of Fafnir’s blood on that sore thumb. When it made contact with Sigurd’s tongue he was suddenly able to understand the songs of birds. In the tree above his head were two nuthatches who warned him of Regin’s treacherous intentions. Sigurd did what any self-respecting hero would have done and cut off Regin’s head (hurrah). Sigurd loaded the treasure onto his horse, Granir, and rode off into the sunset. Unfortunately for our somewhat flawed hero the treasure included a gold ring that had belonged to the dwarf Andvan and was now accursed. Sigurd thenceforth lived a life of misfortune before shortly dying. He didn’t even get a share of Tolkien’s money.
Phew! Now you will notice that these events are a bit obscure on the Heysham hogback, but not here at Halton. One panel has Regin re-forging the sword surrounded by the tools of the smith’s trade. Other key events portrayed are a headless Regin, Sigurd sucking his thumb while he roasts Fafnir’s heart, the bird’s whispering in Sigurd’s ear and so on.
The cross is believed to date from AD1000, maybe seventy years after the Heysham hogback. Further south in England, the great Anglo-Saxon church of Barnack dated from around then, as did the magnificent Anglo-Saxon tower at Earls Barton. Up here in the Anglo-Norse country, it seems, the Pagan-Christian dilemma persisted for longer and it is important to stress that at Halton and Heysham we are talking about the Norse, not the Danes who infiltrated and ruled much of the west and middle of the country. They may have been lumped together by history as “The Vikings” but their cultural and geopolitical identities and not the same.
Some of the carvings on the western side of the churchyard cross can be interpreted as Christian. The same ambivalence bedevils interpretations of the celebrated Gosforth Cross in western Cumbria. There are evangelists at the top of the cross here but Pevsner reported that at least one cleric-historian believed that these were originally part of the Anglian cross inside the church. We should never underestimate the desperation of some commentators to deny the religious ambivalence of Norse and Danes for whom the Christian deity was not necessarily “The One True God”.
The churchyard cross claims so much attention that it is easy to forget that the main fragment inside the church is in fact two centuries earlier. It is Anglian (it is easy to forget that this was not “Saxon” country) and predates the Norse invasion. Christianity’s advance in these islands was, over the centuries, inexorable but it is sobering to reflect that although the Vikings also succumbed to its attractions, the “One True God” malarkey suffered a setback after their conversion!
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