In a boost to the age-old legends of Viking warriors reaching the Black and Caspian seas and beyond, scientists are saying that a ring found near Stockholm with an Arabic inscription shows the clearest link yet between the two cultures in the ninth century.
The ring, a gilded silver signet, has a colored-glass stone inscribed with the word Allah in Arabic.
“Our analysis shows that the studied ring consists of a high quality (94.5 percent) non-gilded silver alloy, set with a stone of colored soda-lime glass with an Arabic inscription reading some version of the word Allah,” biophysicist Sebastian Wärmländer of Stockholm University wrote in the journal Scanning .
The inscription is in the early Kufic script, which would be consistent with the ninth century grave it was found it. The ring was first uncovered a hundred years ago, in a grave outside Stockholm. It was found in a wooden coffin alongside jewellery, brooches and the remains of clothing, which have been dated to around 850 A.D.
The findings, reported in Scanning, say that the quality of the ring along with the lack of wear marks on it, suggest that the woman who was buried with it had received it directly from the silversmith, with few, if any owners, in between.
"The ring may therefore constitute material evidence for direct interactions between Viking Age Scandinavia and the Islamic world. Being the only ring with an Arabic inscription found at a Scandinavian archaeological site, it is a unique object among Swedish Viking Age material,” the report said.