A VIKING GOLD AMULET, CIRCA 10TH CENTURY A.D. OR LATER

拍品描述

A VIKING GOLD AMULET, CIRCA 10TH CENTURY A.D. OR LATER Of circular form, hammered from a thin sheet of gold and worked in repoussé from the reverse to produce a raised design in low relief on the obverse. At the centre stands a frontal anthropomorphic figure, arms bent at the elbows and raised outward, legs parted and bent at the knees in a squared, angular posture. The body is rendered as a series of straight and right-angled ridges, the head small and rounded, the torso an unadorned smooth field marked only by two small punched points. Flanking the figure, further raised ridges radiate outward in stepped, geometric patterns that fill the field to the edge of the disc. A separately formed tubular suspension loop is attached at the top, made from a folded strip of sheet gold. Small losses and splits are visible in the sheet at the centre and along the edges, consistent with the thinness of the metal. The central figure, frontal and with arms and legs symmetrically bent, belongs to a schematic anthropomorphic type recurrent in Northern European amuletic production of the later Iron Age and Viking period. Such figures are commonly interpreted as protective or apotropaic in function, and their reduction to angular geometry reflects a wider Scandinavian tendency to abstract the human form into a pattern of ridges and joints rather than a naturalistic body. The stepped ridges radiating around the figure recall the labyrinthine and interlaced ornament familiar from Viking-age metalwork, where line and pattern take precedence over volumetric representation. The choice of gold, worked here as a thin hammered sheet rather than as a cast solid, is characteristic of Viking-age personal ornament at its higher register. Gold in the Scandinavian world of the ninth and tenth centuries reached the North largely through trade, tribute, and the movement of Arab dirhams and Byzantine coin, and its use in amuletic pendants signalled both wealth and the protective potency ascribed to the metal itself. The repoussé technique, which allowed a small quantity of gold to be spread across a broad decorative surface, was widely used for bracteates and pendants of this kind, where visual effect and portability outweighed mass. This pendant exemplifies the abstracted, pattern-driven mode of Viking-age amuletic goldwork, in which the human figure is dissolved into geometric ridges and set within a field of radiating ornament. Its interest lies in the survival of a schematic anthropomorphic type in beaten gold, a class of object more often known from silver and base-metal examples, and in the economy with which the sheet has been worked to carry both figure and surround. Dimensions: Height: 4.1 cm

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