This surprises people and it is worth knowing if you are going to wear one and be asked about it.
Several of the designs sold everywhere as Viking symbols first appear in Icelandic magical manuscripts written in the seventeenth century and later. That is six or seven hundred years after the Viking age ended, in a Christian Iceland, in books of folk magic.
They are genuinely old and genuinely Icelandic. They are not Viking-age, and no Norse warrior ever carried one.
The symbols that are properly attested from the period are a shorter list: the hammer, runic script, animal interlace, and a handful of forms like the Valknut whose meaning we still cannot recover.
Which is where this one sits. The disc carries a wolf head in relief at its centre, facing straight out, ringed by a continuous band of runic characters, and runes are on that shorter list.
Because the real history is better. A symbol invented by Icelandic farmers in 1650 to protect livestock has its own story, and it is a more honest one than a fake pedigree.
Gold or silver tone, on a cord or a chain. Cord is softer and more casual; chain is harder wearing and matches the pendant.
See our Norse wolf article and the wolf jewelry range.
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