Fragment of a Staff

Fragment of a Staff

This is a fragment of a staff, possibly a crozier, found in a Viking grave in Norway. The fragment was a taken in a raid and then used as jewelry by the Vikings, broken off from a main staff. It is estimated to date from Northern Britain in the late 8th or early 9th century. Many croziers in Britain were melted and repurposed, and in a way the theft ended up preserving it. Many early British churches and monasteries were targeted for raids by the Vikings. This is one of the only fragments from the antiquity era of Britain that survived to the present.