Viking Age Gold Rings and the Question of "Gefolgschaft"

Abstract

For the Roman Iron Age and Migration Period, based on the combination of the find context and written sources, it has convincingly been proven that gold armrings were associated with military retinue systems. For the Viking Age, gold rings have been neglected as an important object group until now. The Old Norse written sources, with many references to gold rings offer a great potential to analyse their function in the Vking Age. The article discusses the fact that gold rings do not appear in burials in this period any more, but are found almost exclusively in single hoards, and that in contrast to their silver counterparts they were never cut down into pieces.