An Object Two Different Cultures Wrote Down

Most of what is claimed about Norse cult objects comes from one direction: Icelandic prose of the thirteenth century, written by Christians. The oath ring is unusual because a second, much earlier and entirely independent witness exists. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records that in 876 the Danish army in England swore peace to Alfred on a holy ring, and adds that they had never before consented to do so for any people. The chronicler is not describing Scandinavian religion for its own sake. He is explaining why this particular oath was expected to hold, and in doing so he confirms that an English court knew the ring as the Danes' strongest form of swearing, roughly two centuries before the sagas were written.

Set beside that, the Icelandic descriptions become more interesting rather than less. Eyrbyggja saga puts a ring on the platform in a temple, reddened with sacrificial blood, worn on the chieftain's arm at assemblies; Landnamabok gives an oath formula sworn on the ring by named gods. The two bodies of evidence agree on the essentials, that the ring belongs to the presiding authority and that swearing on it is the binding act, without either being derived from the other. That is a much better evidential position than most items in this part of the atlas enjoy, and it is worth saying so explicitly, because the temptation with Norse material is to treat all of it as equally attested when it is not.