This is the Hylestad Portal. A pair of solid, heavy oak panels that stood on either side of the entrance to a wooden church now long gone. It was carved nearly 1000 years ago and the narrow round columns that once framed a heavy wooden door are polished smooth from countless hands touching its surface as people young and old made their way into the church. In the hard, craggy surface of the wood is an intricate carved pattern that tells a familiar story of treasure, greed, love and betrayal.

This story, the Volsunga saga, is depicted in a series of scenes, some framed in circular windows made by the twisting stems of wild vines, others hidden among the foliage. The dragon, sharp clawed and fearsome stretches its long sinewy body down from the top of righthand panel, twisting itself like gnarled stem of a fearsome rose, making it hard to see where one tale begins and the other ends.