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, the thin gold disc worked in repoussé from the reverse to produce a stylised bird of prey shown from above with wings outspread and tail extended downward. The head is rendered as a small triangular projection at the top, from which the body descends along a central ridge; the wings sweep outward and downward, each divided into registers of oblique hatching to suggest the layered rows of primary and covert feathers. The tail, at the lower edge, is treated as a triangular panel of horizontal striations. A separately formed suspension loop of double-ribbed sheet gold is attached at the top, allowing the amulet to be worn as a pendant. The surface retains the soft, slightly puckered appearance characteristic of hand-raised sheet gold, with minor creasing along the rim. The motif belongs to the wider Viking-age repertoire of raptor imagery, in which the bird of prey, most often identified as a falcon, hawk, or eagle, functioned as an emblem of martial power and divine agency. In Norse thought the raptor was closely associated with Odin, who assumed falcon form by donning the feather cloak (valshamr) of Freyja, and with the ravens Huginn and Muninn who served as his messengers. The frontal, wings-spread posture, with the body reduced to a symmetrical axial device, is a schematic convention shared with contemporary bird-shaped brooches and pressed foil mounts recovered across Scandinavia and the wider Viking diaspora. Gold in the Viking world was a material of restricted circulation, obtained chiefly through trade, tribute, and raiding contact with the Carolingian, Anglo-Saxon, Byzantine, and Islamic economies. Unlike silver, which formed the standard medium of Viking-age exchange and hoarding, gold was reserved for objects of high personal or ritual significance, its use signalling elite status and, in amuletic contexts, the perceived potency of the object itself. Sheet-gold pendants of this type, light in weight but visually commanding, were designed to be worn on the person as protective devices, the image raised from behind so that the motif stands proud of the surface in the manner of the gold bracteates of the earlier Migration period, from which the Viking-age tradition ultimately descends. This amulet exemplifies the survival of the bracteate impulse into the later Viking centuries, in which the raised repoussé image on a thin gold disc continues to serve as both ornament and talisman. The reduction of the raptor to an axial, near-heraldic device places the piece within a tradition where iconographic clarity and material value are held in balance, the bird's protective association carried in the gold itself as much as in the image it bears. Dimensions: Height: 3.9cm

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