Richard Myers Shelton advocates in his guest contribution from January 17th, 2021 the thesis that the alleged errors in some historical Scandinavian labyrinths are not at all, but that these labyrinths had a completely different meaning than we assign to them today. So they were deliberately created in this way.
I can understand his train of thought, but still allow myself a different perspective on these labyrinths.
In Part 1 I focused on the Borgo Labyrinth. Today is about the Wier Labyrinth.
I found different representations for it. One comes from Johan Reinhold Aspelin in his report from 1877.
Fig. 1: The Wier labyrinth by Aspelin
Karl Ernst von Baer also reported in 1844 on labyrinth-shaped stone layouts in the Russian North where he wrote about his visit to the island of Wier in 1838 and even left a drawing of the labyrinth.
Fig. 2: The Wier labyrinth by von Baer
Then there is another depiction in Nigel Pennick’s European Troytowns from 1981.
Fig. 3: The Wier labyrinth by Pennick
My thoughts on this labyrinth are as follows:
It was probably laid out by sailors who landed on the island of Wier and had previously seen similar stone settings in other places. They wanted to build such a labyrinth with the stones, of which there were enough on Wier. Surely they had no plan and just tried to recreate it from memory. They first laid the stones in a spiral arrangement and then wanted to create an access with a branch. If you went to the right at her work, you came to the center. If you went to the left, however, you ended up in a dead end.
I don’t think that’s what they intended. Their main mistake was probably that they did not consider that in a labyrinth of this kind there had to be a double spiral in the middle rather than a single spiral.
How could the Wier labyrinth be “saved” with as few interventions as possible and turned into a functional labyrinth?
I see two options. Here is the first:
Fig. 4: A spiral-shaped Wier labyrinth
You have to remove the left access line and close two other lines. This results in the type with the path sequence: 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8. This is a very simple labyrinth, but it also creates a change of direction with every change of circuit. So it’s not just a simple spiral.
Here the second option:
Fig. 5: A simple Wier labyrinth with a spiral in the middle
This requires a “conversion” in three places. The result is a labyrinth with the following path sequence: 3-2-1-4-5-6-7-8. This is a 3-circuit Knossos labyrinth with a simple spiral in the center.
In previous posts I named this type the Indian labyrinth. However, it is also to be seen as a further development of the Baltic wheel and occurs more often in the Scandinavian region.
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