**Originally Listed At $400**

Northern Europe, Viking / Norse peoples, ca. 8th to 11th centuries CE. A pretty double-stranded necklace composed of Viking glass and stone beads around a central white bronze bead. The white bronze bead is bulbous, with cylindrical terminals that flare slightly at either end around a central openwork ball. The rest of the necklace is composed of alternating green glass cylindrical beads and larger stone beads, made mostly from yellow quartz, roughly thirty beads of each, with some red glass beads interspersed into the pattern. A wearable and beautiful piece with modern gold-plated findings. Length of strand: 20" L (50.8 cm); size of white bronze bead: 1.4" W x 0.75" H (3.6 cm x 1.9 cm)

By 800 CE, the Vikings were trading across a huge area, from the islands of the North Atlantic (the first glass beads known from North America appear to have come from the Viking trading post at L'anse aux Meadow, Newfoundland) to northern Russia and the Islamic world; glass beadmaking was a standard in many of the regions they visited, and so they returned home and established beadmaking workshops in Scandinavia and traded them at the great trading emporia / wics like Hedeby and Birka. Beads were often worn as festoons strung between oval brooches, though sometimes also as necklaces.

Provenance: private Orange County, California, USA collection

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#128403

Beads have signs of war and minor chips, with patina - in places creamy and / or iridescent - on the glass. Bronze bead also has darker patina. Modern stringing.