The Objects Tell a Story

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
 
The objects in the hoards provide us with valuable information about the underlying community. The hoards indicate to a certain extent a community’s access to precious metal, but of even greater significance, demonstrate how the community in question has had the possibility, encouraged, or maybe even been obliged to withdraw enormous quantities of precious metal from circulation above the ground.  
Detalj från bildsten, Ardre socken. Statens Historiska Museum.
     
Jewellery, coins and other processed metal give information on craft techniques, degree of skill, design and style. The idiom of design and style probably symbolised status and affliliation within and between communities. During long periods of time a certain idiom has been the norm. It can then be deduced that the style has had an underlying symbolic significance. An example is the strict adherence to the highly stylized animal ornamentation during the greater part of the Early and Late Iron Age (400–1100 A.D). This can be compared with the Medieval plant ornamentation and eventually the more and more naturalistically portrayed people, animals and devils.

The Viking Age gold and silver smithing was of amazingly high quality.The craftsmen’s techniques and long experience of craftsmanship lay behind this work, which the modern goldsmith with today’s modern techniques can no longer accomplish.

  The Viking Age upper class needed lavish goods not only for their own use, but even as gifts to exchange with the empires and dynasties of the surrounding world. The goldsmith had a very important duty to perform. His work demanded time, patience and a thorough knowledge of the contemporaneous techniques and idioms. There must have been goldsmith specialists in the Viking Age society, and there is every reason to presume that the most skilful were held in high estimation.

  The Icelandic sagas provide striking examples of the position of the smiths and their craft in the Viking Age society. This applied not only to the weapon forgers, whose work often meant the difference between life and death for the wielder, but also to the jeweller, whose creations were used for status-accentuating purposes. The great man, who had also mastered a craft, was held in very high esteem. Egil Skallagrimson was said to be as good a smith as he was a writer.

  The heroes and kings in the sagas were often in close contact with a master smith, who supplied them with weapons and luxury goods bearing almost magic qualities. In the saga about Sigurd the Dragon Slayer, Regine, the treacherous, but quick-witted smith, forged a sword with which Sigurd would later slay the dragon Fafnir.

  Often the "wee folk underground" and the dwarfs are portrayed as being highly skilful smiths, and both the Nordic and other myths mention the Aesir smiths. Of all the gods in the Ancient Nordic mythology Tor excelled as a smith with his hammer Mjoelner. The gods also owned other magic luxury goods that had been forged by the most skilful among the dwarfs.

  On a Gotlandic picture stone from Ardre Parish, there is a depiction of what is generally believed to be an extract from the Ancient Nordic saga about Wayland the smith.

  The Lord of the Elves, Wayland, was the most skilful of smiths. He forged both weapons and jewellery of the most amazing quality. When King Nidud heard of this, he had these treasures confiscated and took Wayland prisoner. Wayland was placed in a smithy on a desert islet, where he was forced to forge for the king. In order to prevent his escape, the king had Wayland hamstrung. All the time Wayland plotted revenge in greatest secrecy. One day he enticed the king’s sons into his smithy, on the pretext of showing them his work. Immediately he chopped off their heads and hid their bodies under the water pit of the bellows. Of their skulls he made magnificent silver-plated bowls and of their teeth he made a necklace for the king’s daughter, and their eyes were made into jewels of glittering precious stones that he presented to the queen. Later the king’s daughter visited the smithy. Wayland plied her with mead until she fell asleep. He violated her, leaving her with child.

  Wayland’s brother collected birds’ feathers that he gave to Wayland in secrecy. Of these Wayland made himself two large wings, with which he managed to escape. In the course of his flight, he enumerated his foul deeds to the unsuspecting king Nidud, who thus suffered the accomplished revenge.

  The descriptions of the smith in the sagas and myths have innumerable parallels in later folklore. True-life smiths were accredited supernatural qualities and were thought to understand and be capable of more than other mortals. Further to their special knowledge of the actual forging processes, they were considered capable of healing the sick, of exposing thieves and of putting spells on man and beast.

  It was important to keep in with the smith. The mysterious shroud surrounding him and his trade gave rise to notions of his collaboration with the powers of darkness, indeed with the devil himself ...