SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

18 Saga-Book of the Viking Society
to work. On the basis of the art styles, however, it seems
reasonable to suggest that the main period of production
of the surviving decorated crosses was comparatively
short - spanning rather less than a century. Crosses
carved by Gaut are separated from those carved with the
first flickering traces of the Ringerike style by no more
than the sixty years that span the period from 940 to
1000. The tradition of erecting tombstones in the
Norse manner continued beyond this to Maughold
175 which is of twelfth-century date and reads
K uan sunr M ailb , , , ak , , , kirpi lik tinn aftir kuina
sina
"Kuan son of Mailb . , . ak .. , made this to the memory
of his wife",51
But this is undecorated and, in the light of the two stones
carved by John the Priest, 144 (II4) and 145 (IIs) ­
who seems to have had antiquarian leanings - this may
perhaps be one of the latest memorial stones erected with
a runic inscription in the Isle of Man.
n Cubbon, loco cit,