At the end of the 19th century, an archaeological team found a mysterious Arab ring in the excavation of the commercial center of Birka, considered the first Swedish city, an urban center located on the island of Björko, in Lake Mälaren, 45 minutes by boat from Stockholm.
It does not seem that the discovery in a tomb dated around 950 AD of this curious ring in Birka, a town intrinsically connected to the Baltic Sea that was a nerve center in the Viking Age, between 793 and 1066 of our era, was not unreasonable. /P>
But what really confirms this ring, which was believed to include a violet-colored amethyst stone, is the commercial relationship between the Viking civilization and the Islamic world. Actually the precious stone was not such; an electronic scan by biophysicist Sebastian Wärmländer of Stockholm University determined that it was actually colored glass, a much rarer material at the time.
This researcher is one of those who signed an article published at the end of February 2015 in the Scanning magazine. The crystal stone includes an inscription on its top that reads "for Allah" or "to Allah" in Kufic, the ancient Arabic script. Norsemen had been trading luxurious glassware from Egypt and Mesopotamia for at least 3,400 years.
Historical sources date these trade contacts between Scandinavian and Islamic culture to at least 1,000 years ago, although these contacts are considered to date back at least a millennium.
This silver ring does not appear to have seen much use and may have been made by an Arab silver craftsman. Perhaps it had no owner until it reached Viking territory, where it is certain that it was given to a woman, who was buried at the end of her days with him.
The piece is unique, since to date no ring of Arab origin with an inscription has been found in any archaeological excavation. It is currently kept in the Swedish History Museum in Stockholm.