Bronze coated cubo-octahedral weights with an iron core from Viking Age Sweden

Abstract

Finds ofViking Period weights are frequently made in Scandinavia and the neigh-bouring parts of eastern and central Europe. In Sweden alone nearly 1000 such weights have been found. One important type is the bronze covered spherical iron weight (usually between 5 and 150 g), another is the solid bronze cubo-oc-tahedron (usually 0.5 to 5 g). It has now been observed that some of these
cubo-octahedrons have an iron core coated with bronze. Usually the bronze cover has pores allowing water or water vapour to attack the iron. The rust formed often covers the weight entirely. Therefore, they were not included into the metrological studies earlier carried out upon weights of Bandlunde (Sperber 1996).