Viking Age Decorated Bone Knife Handle

With carinated outer face and incised lozenge detailing, tapering beast-head finials. 13.5 grams, 60 mm



Private collection, Arundel, West Sussex, UK, 1980s.

Miniature drum-shaped vessel with strap handle, beaded wire bands to top and bottom of sidewall, filigree loop ornament. 2.45 grams, 21 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 brooches each with two parallel arms running perpendicular to the ends of the ring; Finnish or Baltic type. 56 grams total, 3.6-10 cm



Acquired on the European art market since the early 2000s. From the private Northern Ireland collection of R.M.