Jewellery as Form of Personal Expression

The Nordic Design of the Iron Age
Introduction Jewellery as Form of Personal Expression
Hoards from the Roman Iron Age – Early Viking Age Coinage
Hoards from the Early Viking Period Hoards from the Medieval Period and Later
Hoards from the Late Viking Period Silver on the Gotlandic Farms
The Dragon’s Gold Treasures on the Sea Floor
The Objects Tell a Story More Recent Treasure Tales
 
Vanity has always been a human trait. In the Viking Age pictoral art, the hairstyles, costumes and sets of jewellery worn at the time have always been intimated. Contemporary travellers have described the Vikings as bearing either tattoos or cosmetics.

Jewellery has undoubtedly been worn by anyone having the means of paying for it. Some types of jewellery have been more common than others, judging from the archaeological source material. A clear standardisation of the Viking Age jewellery composition would suggest a uniform dress, where certain jewels were included as regular costume accessories.

 
     
There has obviously been a difference in the sets of jewels worn by men and women. Typical Gotlandic female jewellery included the animal-head and pill-box shaped brooches, the fish-head shaped pendants, bead sets and personal objects hanging on fine chains. Typical male jewellery included the penannular brooches and belt-mounts, as well as costly personal armaments. Bracelets and rings have been worn by both men and women.

Jewels found in graves differ from those in depositions and hoards. The grave yields are almost always of bronze and iron. In the female graves the animal-head and pill-box shaped brooches are the most common. Penannular brooches are most common in the male graves. More unusual jewels like bead sets, fish-head shaped pendants and jewels of precious stones are more frequent in the depositions and hoards than in graves. One example is the hoard from Vibble in Västerhejde.

The animal-head shaped brooches correspond to the tortoise shell brooches on the Swedish mainland. These brooches have had the practical function of holding together the garments, e.g. the shoulder straps. They have even been worn by small girls. Miniature animal-shaped brooches have been uncovered in infant graves. On Gotland they are often found lying in threes in the graves, and not as they are presumed to have been worn, i.e. in pairs.

 

Pill-box shaped brooches embellished with silver and gold are rare. They are discovered in rather unusual combinations alongside fishhead shaped pendants and beads of gold and glass. They are never found in combination with coins, nor in graves where the jewels are less elaborate.

Polished rock crystals set in silver have not been found anywhere in the Nordic regions except on Gotland. They turn up among hoards and grave goods from the transition period between the Viking Age and the Medieval Period and they also appear during this period out in Europe.

  

 

  

Large natural deposits of rock crystal have been discovered in the Alps, although the silver-mounted rock crystals on Gotland probably emanate from Persia, when the town of Basra was a renowned centre for crystal crafts during the prehistoric periods.

 Most of the rock crystals on Gotland are lens-shaped and the ornamentation on the mount suggests that they were already set in the silver mounts when imported from the Slavic regions. The ornamentation on the mount of the spherical crystals differs and might well have been created on Gotland.

  
     
 The polished rock crystals have a magnifying effect, which has led to theories of them having been used as magnifying glasses. Suggestions have even been put forth that they were used as navigational aids. The most commonly accepted interpretation, however, is that they were worn as adornment.