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The church of St Wilfrid, Halton, Lancashire, contains a cross which was reconstructed from four stones (Halton St Wilfrid 1, 2, 9 and 10 in the Corpus for Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture) in 1890-91.

One side of the lower part of this cross contains scenes from the Sigurd legend.

Richard Bailey describes the panel as follows:

”At the bottom of the shaft is a smith at work in his forge, together with his working tools, and a headless body. This might legitimately be interpreted as Wayland with the king’s son, were it not for the accompanying scenes which show a thumb-sucking figure and a tree with birds. The whole panel thus shows Regin twice, once at work and once beheaded. Halton therefore gives us the same simultaneous presentation of the narrative as we found on the Swedish stones.”

Bailey, R.N., (1980) “Viking Age Sculpture” Collins, London, p.120

A detailed discussion of the scenes on this lower panel, which differs slightly from Richard Bailey’s interpretation, has been provided by Professor Howard M. R. Williams on this website: A Dwarf in his Smithy? Reginn at Halton.

The Halton Cross Shaft
(click on the image to enlarge)

The Halton Cross Shaft (Detail)
(click on the image to enlarge)