The carved man has a middle parting and wavy hair.
The back of the head is cropped short, with a small curl is visible above the ear.
The Viking sports a strong moustache and prominent sideburns.
The most remarkable feature, however, is the man's long, pointed, and braided beard.
"This is as close as we get to a portrait of a Viking," says Peter Pentz.
The Danish researcher speculates that the figurine may once have been a piece from Hnefatafl, a popular Viking board game.
The people in the Oseberg find
Portraits of people are not common in artworks from the Viking Age. More common are animal motifs and abstract patterns.
"One of our most important sources for Viking hairstyles and clothing are the tapestries from the Oseberg burial," says Marianne Vedeler.
She is a professor at the Museum of Cultural History in Oslo.
Annonse
"They can give us an impression of clothes and style at the beginning of the Viking Age," she tells Science Norway.
In the Oseberg Ship, a tapestry was found showing women and men in procession. This copy was made by Stig Saxegaard in 2018. In it, the men are shown without beards. But the Oseberg people may belong to an earlier part of the Viking Age than the Fløgstad man.(The image is a detail from a larger picture in Marianne Vedeler’s book De gåtefulle billedvevene (The Enigmatic Tapestries).)
Did the Vikings have beards?
None of the men on the Oseberg Ship tapestries have visible beards.
Marianne Vedeler assumes that the Fløgstad man, with his carefully groomed beard, belongs to a later period of the Viking Age than the Oseberg find. The difference may be one or two hundred years.
This could suggest that fashions in men’s hair and beards shifted over time.
She points out that the three-dimensional nature of the Fløgstad figurine – and the detailed rendering of his braided beard – makes this find particularly exciting.
Vedeler also notes that many researchers view beards as an important symbol of masculinity in Viking society.
Carved from walrus ivory
Peter Pentz at the museum in Copenhagen is a specialist in ancient figurines. He believes this could be the closest we will ever come to a Viking portrait.
Other human figures from the Viking Age are usually quite generic. They often depict people without distinct features, Pentz notes.
The Fløgstad man was carved from the large tusks of a walrus.
This ivory was among the most valuable materials in the later Viking Age. I In the later Viking Age, this material was one of the most prized commodities, often sourced from the Norse settlements in Greenland and highly sought after throughout Northern Europe. It was used to make reliquary shrines, game pieces, and luxury items.
The choice of ivory for the Fløgstad man suggests that it was made for someone of high status.
Gold foil figures are tiny depictions that also show us people in the Nordic region far back in time. They were likely brought to Norway from southern Sweden or Denmark, though they are several centuries older than the Viking Age. Here we get a glimpse of the man's and woman's hair. This gold foil figure was found at Hov in Norway.(Photo: Museum of Cultural History)
The Fløgstad man on display in Copenhagen
The Fløgstad man is now on display at the National Museum in Copenhagen, as part of the new exhibition The Viking Sorceress.
Marianne Vedeler at the museum in Oslo explains that many artefacts found in Norway before the union with Denmark ended in 1814 quickly found their way to Copenhagen.
"That's why it's not so surprising that this figurine ended up there as well," she says.
A rider's grave in Eastern Norway
Both Romerike and Hedmark are rich in ancient burial mounds.
In 1796, one such mound in Sørum yielded six bone buttons, a gaming die, and the small Viking figurine. The objects had been placed in a soapstone bowl.
The same grave also contained a double-edged sword, a spearhead, a whetstone, blacksmith's tongs, and numerous fittings, rivets, and nails. A horse's spur was also found.
The grave is thought to have belonged to a rider from the Viking Age.
