The long, strange journey of Viking-age ringed pins

Abstract

• Ringed pins are the calling card of the Viking Age in Britain and Ireland: small, low-value metal cloak fasteners, found in dressed burials, and frequently encountered as stray finds. They have a complex trajectory, beginning as Irish dress items in the pre-Viking period. From the middle of the ninth century, they began to be mass produced in the newly-founded trading settlements of the Viking Age Irish Sea, particularly in Dublin. For a short period into the tenth century, they are found across the Scandinavian-speaking diaspora, as far as Iceland and L’Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland, showing that they were worn by a new class of migrant seafarers. However, in Ireland and Scotland, ringed pins continued to be made and evolved into a variety of ringed and unringed styles long after they fell out of fashion in 842 Scandinavia. Reflecting on the afterlife of these dress fasteners as an archaeology of Gaeldom forces us to reassess their role in the funerary rituals of the Viking Age, and revisit the way we apply the term ‘Hiberno-Norse’.