Skál - Icelandic drinking horns

The Bozar (Beaux Arts, for those who don't get their pun) has an exhibition of Icelandic drinking horns on at the moment. These are - literally - cows' horns that were used either as drinking cups, or enclosed at their wide end and used as containers to carry alcoholic drinks (medieval hip-flasks, in a sense). The ones in the exhibition are all inticately carved, often with images as well as inscriptions indicating the owner.

















Apart from the intrinsic beauty of the horns, the exhibition provoked two thoughts:

Firstly, why have these objects been preserved so well in Iceland, when elsewhere in Europe where they must have also existed, they are entirely absent? Who had them? Were they prized family possessions in the bottom of a chest in a remote farmhouse?

Secondly, how different Iceland is from most of Europe! A society that produced such works, and valued them enough to preserve them, for up to 500 years in some cases, is so different to the rest of western Europe. How little we know of Icelend, yet we believe it to be just a marginal offshoot of Scandinavia.

I have been fascinated by Iceland for some time, and the more I see of it the greater the fascination grows. Skál is only a small glimpse of what this great little country has produced, and we're lucky to have had this glimpse in Brussels. I hope more will come in the near future.