A Bronze Ringed Pin with Hiberno-Viking affinities from Ribe

Abstract

A Bronze Ringed Pin with Hiberno-Viking affinities from Ribe

In a brief preliminary account of an excavation in the Grønnegade district of Ribe the excavator published a photograph of a bronze pin which was labelled as a possible bodkin (1). The pin was illustrated along with some other objects, as an example of a medieval find - one of the thousands discovered in the Grønnegade area north of the Cathedral during the excavations which commenced in 1955. These investigations and subsequent cuttings opened up on the south bank of Ribe Å failed to yield any clear evidence of Viking Age structures or material (2). Although this appears to be the present position the closest analogies for the bronze pin which is the subject of this note are to be found amongst the Hiberno-Viking ringed pins of the middle and late Viking phases.

The pin itself measures some 136mm. in length and the very small ring has a diameter of just 11mm. (Fig. 1). The shank is circular in section at the top, thickening towards mid­point and then assuming a thin rectangular section before tapering to a very fine point. It is decorated with three bands of horizontal groovings and has a hole drilled through the lower flattened section. The pin-head is unusual in that it consists of two baluster-type heads placed one above the other, the whole surmounted by a polyhedral head which holds the small ring. Both the baluster heads display the typical upper and lower collars and the main lozenge-shaped panels together with the minor triangular facets are decorated with a series of sunken, punched dots. The polyhedral-shaped upper head which crowns the pin is undecorated but has a large perforation through which the tiny link-type ring is threaded. This component is made from a thin circular-sectioned wire rod whose ends are butted together. The ring can swivel freely and also slide around in the pin-head. There are traces of corrosion on portions of the pin-head but these areas and the entire pin are now conserved and display a golden bronze colour.

Although this Ribe pin has a very unusual if not unique head form, the elements which comprise it are easily paralleled amongst the Irish and Hiberno-Viking pins from western, insular contexts (3). Bronze pins with baluster heads are amongst the earliest forms known from Irish habitation sites and are usually associated with a loose spiral-type ring particularly in pre-Viking levels as at Lagore Crannog, Co. Meath (4). The baluster pin-head continued in fashion during the Viking period but with a plain ring attached as at Lissue ringfort (5), and examples have been found in 10th and 11th century levels at Winetavern Street (6), and Fishamble Street (7) in the Dublin excavations. In some instances the facets are ornamented with a pattern of impressed dots just as displayed on the Ribe pin, and this motif can also be seen on the pin from the Viking grave at Ballateare in the Isle of Man (8) which has been assigned a dating bracket of 850-950 A.D. (9). A number of plain-ringed baluster-headed pins have also been found in a late 10th century context at the Coppergate site in York (10), and here, as in Dublin, the form most frequently associated with them is the plain-ringed polyhedral-headed variety (11). This particular type of ringed pin whose pin-head form is represented on top of the Ribe pin is widely distributed in Ireland and throughout the western regions settled and frequented by the Hiberno-Norse - from the Isle of Man to the Scottish Isles and even as far north and west as Iceland and Newfoundland (12). Apart from two exceptions, known to the writer (13), these forms of ringed pin do not occur in Norway itself and this absence tends to confirm the Hiberno-Viking association. It is interesting to find the combination of both pin-head forms - baluster and polyhedral - on the Ribe example. Two other bronze ringed pins with polyhedral-type heads and bearing dot patterns impressed on both their pin-heads and rings are known from Denmark, one from Arhus (14) and another find from Odense (15). Significantly, all three Danish pins are from town sites and in the case of the Arhus and Odense specimens from Viking levels. An example with a baluster-type head and another fine specimen with a polyhedral head have been found at Haithabu (16) to further emphasise this association with centres of trade and commerce in the Viking period.

The tiny wire ring threaded through the large perforation in the upper polyhedral portion of the Ribe pin-head belongs to a form of ring usually associated with the small plate­headed pins found in Viking contexts in Scandinavia and the Baltic region. These distinctive pins have short shanks with expanded or cubical-type heads crowned with a plate which is perforated to hold a small bronze wire ring of slip-knot or link form. Examples are known from Haithabu (17), from Birka (18), and Helgø (19). The type is also found in Norway at Kaupang and at other Viking sites in the Vestfold area south of Oslo (20). A number of these Vestfold pins have a baluster rather than a simple cubical type protrusion below the plate and display the dot ornament as found on the insular pins. The early Viking levels in the Nicolaigade area of Ribe excavated in the 1970s and coin-dated to the 8th century yielded two examples of this Scandinavian form of ringed pin. In one instance the pin-head has a triangular-shaped expansion with a small holed projection above it to hold the tiny linked-type ring. The triangular area has traces of a gilt interlaced design (21). It has no close parallels but obviously belongs to the same general group of which the second pin (as yet unpublished) is a good example. This is almost a miniature ringed pin only 58mm. long but it has the typical lozenge-shaped 'plate' head perforated to hold the tiny slip-knot ring (22). At the time of discovery the present writer offered some comments on these two pins pointing out the parallels with similar pins from 9th century contexts at Ytre Moa (23) and Kaupang in Norway and likewise the comparisons with the pins from Haithabu. Such plate-headed pins are rarely found in the insular west - only three examples have surfaced in Ireland - the first amongst a group of Viking objects from Inchbofin, Co. Westmeath (24) and there are two specimens from Viking Dublin (25). The form appears to be an adaptation, in the general Scandinavian region and probably in the early Viking period, of a simple pin type owing its origins to one of the stick-pin forms current during the later Roman Iron Age (26).

To return to the ringed pin which is the specific subject of this note its peculiar form seems to be an amalgam of various components with the long shank, baluster and polyhe­dral head showing affinities with the insular Hiberno-Viking pins and its tiny ring related to the small Scandinavian pins discussed above. It is tempting to see this pin, therefore, as the product of a Viking workshop at Ribe where the craftsman had, as his models, examples of the plain-ringed pins with baluster and polyhedral heads which could have been brought in as a result of trading links with York or Dublin in the late 10th or 11th centuries A.D. The addition of the polyhedral head plus the long shank of the pin would tend to suggest such western influence though the possibility of some influence from the Vestfold pins cannot be ruled out. As for the ring form we have already seen how proto-types for the tiny wire ring existed among the early Viking material from Ribe. The perforation in the lower portion of the shank is most unusual and there is no parallel for this feature, known to the writer, on such a pin. It may well be of secondary workmanship. Whether the pin functioned as a dress-fastener or a bodkin, its closest affinities lie amongst the Hiberno-Viking ringed pin types current between 900 and 1050 A.D. Its occurrence amongst the finds from the Grønnegade district of Ribe poses the question of the possibility of a late Viking presence in an area to the south of Ribe Å. Future excavation and further research may help to solve this particular problem.

Thomas Fanning