Een Vendelhelm uit Hallum? Verslag van een archeologische zoektocht

Samenvatting

A Vendel helmet from Hallum? Report of an archaeological quest. In 1913, two bronze animal heads from a terp site near Hallum (Friesland) were first inter-preted as parts of a knife or dagger handle. The inventory of ‘nordische Kammhelme’ by Steuer in 1987 presented parallels for a different interpretation: the Hallum finds may have been part of a 6th- or 7th-century, Swedish-type ‘Vendel helmet’. Although the interpretation of both objects as animal heads with a Scandinavian origin was soon generally accepted in Frisian archaeology, the finds themselves were never studied in detail - until a recent study by the authors. The preliminary outcome of this multidisciplinary research is that the heads were casted from an alloy of copper mixed with tin, zinc and some lead, that the heads may have been casted in one piece and separated afterwards, that they indeed belong to a Vendel helmet, and that they most likely have been re-used as decorative mounts on a different object. How the Swedish-style items ended up in Friesland, and how the early-medieval Frisian-Swedish connection should be explained, is the subject of a forthcoming paper.