The Mould at Trendgarden, and Who Wears One Now

The dating is the interesting part. Hammer pendants cluster in the ninth to eleventh centuries, which is precisely the period in which Scandinavia was converting to Christianity, and that has generated a long argument about cause. One reading is that wearing a hammer was a response to wearing a cross, a way of saying whose side you were on in the same visual language, so the practice is a product of the encounter rather than an ancient custom. Another is that the amulet is older and simply becomes visible when silver becomes plentiful and burial practice changes. A soapstone mould from Trendgarden in Jutland is cited in every version of this discussion, because a single block cuts both a hammer and a cross, and it will support either conclusion: a smith serving two markets, or one market that had not yet decided.

The pendant has a second life. Modern Asatru, Forn Sidr and related heathen organisations, which took shape in Iceland, Scandinavia, Britain and North America from the 1970s onward, use the hammer as their most recognisable emblem, and members wear it. That is a reconstruction, built from the medieval texts and the archaeology by people who were quite open about building it, and it is a different thing from the religion of the ninth century. It is also contested internally, because the same symbol has been taken up by racist groups whom the mainstream heathen bodies have repudiated in explicit public statements. A modern hammer is therefore not evidence about the Viking Age, and it should not be read as one.