TRONDHEIM, NORWAY—Horsetalk reports that a piece of bronze jewelry found by a metal detectorist near the Trondheim Fjord may have been crafted in a Celtic workshop. The ornament, thought to have been made in the eighth or ninth century as a fitting for a horse’s harness, resembles a bird and has fish- or dolphin-shaped patterns on each of its wings. Holes were later placed on the bottom of the ornament. Traces of rust on its back suggest that it had been turned into a brooch with a needle. “A housewife in mid-Norway probably received the fitting as a gift from a family member who took part in one or more Viking raids to Ireland or Great Britain,” said Aina Margrethe Heen Pettersen of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. She suggests that items brought back from the dangerous raids would have been treasured status symbols. For more, go to “A True Viking Saga.”
