An ancient Viking ring carrying the inscription "for Allah" has revealed evidence of close multicultural contacts between the Nordic warriors and the Islamic world – more than a century after its discovery on a Swedish island.
Made of silver alloy, the ring is adorned with coloured glass, an exotic material at the time, engraved with an ancient Arabic script spelling the words “for Allah” or “to Allah”. The ring was found in a grave near Birka on Björkö Island in the Stockholm archipelago in the late 1800s. Other objects found in the grave indicated a woman had been buried there at around 850 AD.
The stone on the ring had previously been thought to be an amethyst. But on closer inspection Wärmländer and his colleagues revealed it was decorated with coloured glass – an expensive material at the time – and noted it was in perfect condition, indicating it had not had many owners and had not ended up in Birka by accident.
“Instead, it must have passed from the Islamic silversmith who made it to the woman buried at Birka with few, if any, owners in between,” Wärmländer told Discovery News. “The woman herself probably married a man from the Islamic world while visiting the Islamic Caliphate,” he added.
thelocal.se