Scandinavian Pre-Viking Gold Bead

Heater-shaped in profile with openwork Urnes Style interlace, holes for attachment pins to lower corners, beast-head finial to apex; remains of attachment rivets and strap to reverse. 17.8 grams, 55 mm



Found Stowmarket, Suffolk, UK.

A high-quality gilded example, for which we can find no parallel, extremely rare.

Miniature drum-shaped vessel with strap handle, the body decorated with granule clusters. 1.49 grams, 15 mm



Private collection formed in Europe in the 1980s. Westminster collection, central London, UK.

Pendants in the form of miniature buckets have been found in a number of pagan Anglo-Saxon and Viking contexts and are generally made of bronze or iron, with gold examples being rare; three gold examples were found with the hoard from Hoen, Norway. Bronze bucket amulets have been found at Driffield in Yorkshire, and Vimose bog in Denmark, among other places. In form they represent wooden buckets bound with bronze or iron bands which have been found in Anglo-Saxon and Viking graves and are believed to have held mead or ale and were used to replenish the cups from which warriors drank. As amulets they probably represent the ecstatic power of alcoholic drink and the role of women as the dispensers of these precious beverages.

Penannular in form with tapering ends, ropework wire applied between the rounded rods. 128 grams, 76 mm



From the private collection of a London gentleman, from his grandfather's collection formed before the early 1970s.