Marriage proposal’s ring of romance fit for a viking
AS marriage proposals go, mine was nothing if not original, when the 10th picture question in my Christmas Special asked, ‘With this Viking ring, will you marry me Joanie?’ Romantic?
Of course, but very risky as the newspapers were going out across the region on Christmas Eve morning, so I printed off the page and handed it to Joanie. Her mouth stayed open indefinitely and I had to manually close it for her!
The wedding ring in the picture is actually a circa 1,000-year-old Viking gold ring, woven in traditional plaited strands from the purest of gold rods and melded with great dexterity and could have been made yesterday. I showed it to my jeweller and he just said, ‘Wow, that should be in a museum’.
Truth is that, at one stage it was, after being dug up in the mid-20th century on the marshy lands near Malmo in Southern Sweden, when it was loaned to the Castle in Malmo before being returned to private hands and a couple of dealers later the ancient artefact found its way into my grubby hands in Top Mossley. Nearby
Foteviken was at the hub of Viking activity from as early as 793, when the first longboats piled ashore on Lindisfarne in Northumberland. This is commonly known as the beginning of the Viking Age, when Norsemen undertook large-scale raiding, colonizing, conquest and trading throughout Europe. It was easy pickings for many years, helpless monks with countless artefacts and precious objects, ripe for the taking.
The most important jewellery to the Vikings were bands of metal, made up of hammered rounded rods of silver and gold, either plain, simply twisted or in very elaborate and complex plaited designs, exactly like Joanie’s. While appearing to be simple and rudimentary in design, these items of jewellery for the neck, arm or finger were made by artisan craftsmen.
To the Vikings, jewellery had the purpose of instantly displaying the wealth and status of the wearer but, especially with silver, it was used as portable bullion and they would hack off sections as necessary to pay for goods or services. We know this from finding nicks on the edges of pieces of jewellery- nicks which prove that they would check that the jewellery was solid metal, not merely a plated base metal when bartering. These chunks of jewellery are known as ‘hack silver’ or ‘hack gold’. In the Viking sagas, gold rings are sometimes given by kings to members of their retinue as a reward for military service and even to court poets.
Evidence of Viking-era occupation has been found in a number of locations around Foteviken and archaeologists discovered remains of a blockade consisting of stones, wooden stakes and the remains of four Viking ships. My guess is that our ring could have lain a matter of inches below the surface since that time, whether simply lost or on the finger of a dead
Viking, we will never know.
I have seen and photographed the best-preserved Viking ships ever found which are on display in a specially built museum on Oslo’s Bygdøy Peninsula.
The three ships housed here were discovered between 1867 and 1904 in burial mounds in the Vestfold region along the west side of the Oslo
Fjord. The Gokstad Ship, the largest of the three ships at 24 metres (79 feet) long, with space for 32 oarsmen, was built around 890 A.D, a solid vessel built to withstand high seas.
Both the Tune Ship and the Gokstad Ship were used as grave ships for men of high rank.
Less robust than the Gokstad Ship, the Oseberg Ship was a pleasure craft rather than a vessel made for long, rough journeys.
It has a classic curled prow and would have been manned by 30 rowers. The oldest of the three ships, it was built around the period 815 to 820 A.D. and was used as a grave ship for a highranking woman who died in 834. In a spookily topical doff of the cap, the Viking economy and trade network also effectively helped rebuild the European economy after the fall of the Roman Empire.
Bring back the Vikings I say, we might need them this year!