This is a Special Cover issued to commemorate the 25th Anniversary of the Nössjö Philatelic Society in Sweden on 3rd November 1963. Making it 73 years old now. I am sorry, I have not been able to get much gen on the Nössjö Philatelic Society in Sweden. However, I am certain some interested reader of this blog is bound to come up with some info and send it to me, in which case, I shall update this post accordingly.
The stamp on the Cover is really interesting. It was issued on 29th July 1962. It features A wooden statue of St. George slaying the mythical Dragon. It guards the portals of ‘Storkyrkan’ which literally means ‘The Great church”. It is situated in Stockholm. For those not very familiar with St George or the Dragon he is supposed to have slayed, the following narrative might be of interest. The episode of Saint George and the Dragon appended to the hagiography of Saint George was Eastern in origin, brought back with the Crusaders and retold with the courtly appurtenances belonging to the genre of Romance. The earliest known depictions of the motif are from tenth- or eleventh-century Cappadocia and eleventh-century Georgia; previously, in the iconography of Eastern Orthodoxy, George had been depicted as a soldier since at least the seventh century. The earliest known surviving narrative of the dragon episode is an eleventh-century Georgian text.
The dragon motif was first combined with the already standardised Passio Georgii in Vincent of Beauvais' encyclopedic Speculum Historiale, and then Jacobus de Voragine's Golden Legend (ca 1260) guaranteed its popularity in the later Middle Ages as a literary and pictorial subject. The legend gradually became part of the Christian traditions relating to Saint George and was used in many festivals thereafter. This card was sent to me by Kjell
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