The delicate tendrils and pear-like central lobes of this piece identify it with the Viking Ringerike style--the final, most highly developed form of the Viking aesthetic. Here, the degree of abstraction is so advanced that the natural elements of the piece (leaves and vines) are almost unrecognizable.

For many centuries, the Vikings have been reviled as a race of barbarians. Modern scholarship, however, reveals Viking culture as exceptionally inventive and fertile. The Vikings were aggressive explorers, and their contact with many cultures (the most extraordinary proof of this being perhaps the small bronze Buddha-figure from Northern India which was discovered during an excavation at the 6th century trading post of Helgõ in Sweden), if anything, brought them a greater self-awareness of the unique qualities of their own art.