For most archaeologists, the chance to unearth a pristine artefact from the medieval period is a once-in-a-lifetime event.
For Linda Åsheim, it happened on a quiet summer day in the centre of Norway’s oldest town — and it left her, in her own words, with an “out-of-body experience.”
“I thought, ‘Is that gold?’ and then I was completely shaken,” Åsheim recalled after lifting the ring from the soil at a depth of just seven centimetres.
The oval-set stone, deep blue in colour, was framed by exquisite filigree: thin gold wires twisted and soldered into spirals, accented with tiny granulated beads.
Although the blue “stone” is likely coloured glass rather than sapphire, such materials were prized for their symbolic power — believed to cool inner heat, preserve chastity, and confer divine protection.
With its rich decoration and small size, experts believe the ring once belonged to a woman of high status.
The discovery was made during extensive excavations in the Norwegian city of Tønsberg, specifically in Prestegaten and its surrounding streets, where archaeologists from the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research (NIKU) are working on behalf of Tønsberg Municipality.
The excavation area lies within the automatically protected cultural heritage site of Tønsberg Medieval Town, beneath the shadow of the former royal fortress Tunsberghus on Slottsfjellet.
The ring emerged from a cultivation layer beneath a stratum dated by a spruce twig to between AD 1167 and 1269, placing the jewel firmly in the Middle Ages.
Project manager Hanne Ekstrøm Jordahl called the ring “a fantastically beautiful and rare specimen.” Only 220 gold rings are registered in Norway’s national artefact database, Unimus, and just 63 of them are medieval. The last comparable discovery in Tønsberg was made 15 years ago.
According to Professor Marianne Vedeler of the University of Oslo’s Museum of Cultural History, the ring blends styles from several periods. The spiral motifs resemble 9th- to 11th-century designs seen in Norway, England, and Denmark, while the combination of filigree and granulation reflects techniques introduced from the Byzantine and Carolingian worlds.
Sources : NIKU
