Gorgeous 9th C. Viking Silver Footed Ritual Bowl

Northern Europe, Vikings or Viking Rus, ca. 9th century to 11th century CE. A very rare find, a 99% silver bowl most likely deposited in a Viking hoard. The bowl would not originally have been made by Vikings, but its surface has been modified to include Viking motifs. The bulbous designs of its body, with eight large, punched bosses encircling the base, creates a wonderfully textured surface. The exterior below the rim has stamped motifs that will be familiar to fans of Viking artwork - repeated triangles with three dots inside of them. These were likely stamped at a later date after the bowl itself was made, though probably within a few years of its manufacture, as a lucky Viking claimed finder's keepers with this bowl. Size: 7.8" W x 2.15" H (19.8 cm x 5.5 cm); silver is 99%; weight: 323.9 grams

This bowl's bulbous form resembles the Ormside bowl, now held by the York Museums Trust, UK, found in the early 1800s in what is today Cumbria, England. That bowl is actually made from two pieces, manufactured roughly 100 years apart, and fastened together with silver clips. The outer part - the oldest part, which has the bulbous projections - is thought to have been made at an Anglo-Saxon monastery in Northumbria sometime around 750 CE. Famously, the Vikings looted Anglo-Saxon Northumbrian monasteries in 793 CE, when the "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle" states, "Never before has such terror appeared in Britain as we have now suffered from a pagan race... the heathens poured out the blood of saints around the altar, and trampled on the bodies of saints in the temple of God, like dung in the streets." As a result, it is believed that the exterior part of the Ormside bowl was stolen by a Viking from its original monastery home and taken with him to his final resting place, which was a burial with other grave goods in Cumbria. Although this bowl lacks the ornately decorated exterior of the Ormside bowl, it probably came to be in the Vikings' possession in a similar manner.

Provenance: private New York, New York, USA collection; ex-private Kaliningrad (Koenigsberg) and then Latvia collection; found on the Baltic Sea coast prior to 1982

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#153447
Condition Report: Light wear on surface commensurate with age and slight bending to form. The patina in some places, especially on the underside, looks like it may have been exposed to high heat at some point in the past. Great preservation of motifs.