File:Early Medieval Gold Finger-ring (FindID 576314-456288).jpg

Viking-period gold finger-ring from Thaxted, Essex

Surface metal analysis conducted at the British Museum indicated an approximate gold content for the ring of 95-97%, and 2-3% silver, the rest being copper. The ring weighs 32.36 grams.

The finger-ring consists of two thick, tapering rods of circular section, which have been twisted together and alternate with two thin, pre-twisted wires, all beaten together at the back of the hoop into a flat, lozenge-shaped plate. The latter is decorated with three lengthwise rows of punched circles. The ring has been distorted and abraded and one of the wires has been broken, presumably by agricultural activity while buried in the ground; the wires are also loose in places; length (surviving), 35mm.

The basic form and technique of manufacture of the ring are comparable with an example from West Bergholt, Essex, dating from the 10^th-12^th century (J. Graham-Campbell, 2011, The Cuerdale Hoard and related Viking-Age silver and gold from Britain and Ireland in the British Museum, London, British Museum Press, 107-8, 262, Pl. 82, no. 32). Gold rings with lozenge-shaped plates at the back may be a particularly Scandinavian feature, as they occur on examples from Enge and an unrecorded findspot on Gotland (M. Stenberger, 1947, Die Schatzfunde Gotlands der Wikingerzeit, 2 vols., Lund, Abb. 90 and 101).