The sources were written by the victims
The Vikings did not write much down. Almost everything said about them at the time was written by literate monks in monasteries, which is to say by the people they were robbing.
You would not take a burglar's character reference from the householder either. The chronicles are not lies, but they are one side of it, recorded by the side that lost property and lives.
What the archaeology adds
A rather different picture, and a much larger one.
Norse traders reached Constantinople and Baghdad, and Arab silver turns up in Scandinavian hoards in enormous quantity. They settled Iceland and Greenland, and reached Newfoundland around the year 1000, five centuries before Columbus. They built ships that remain among the finest engineering of their age, ran law courts, and produced metalwork of a quality that is hard to overstate.
The raiding was real and it was a few months of the year, done by a minority. The rest was farming, trading and sailing extraordinary distances.
The piece
A tag shape with clipped corners, a snarling wolf head raised at the centre facing straight out, and Norse knotwork filling the panel around it out to the border. The recesses are darkened so the pattern reads at a glance.
Stainless steel in a silver tone, hard enough to keep its detail through daily wear.
Our article on the Norse wolf covers the mythology. See wolf pendant necklaces.
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