ANCIENT RING

An ancient ring has shed new light on the ties between the Vikings and the Islamic world. CNN reports.
Travel between Islam and the Viking world was recorded in ancient texts but it was often in the form of tales of giants and dragons making it hard to separate fact from fiction. Researchers said, "The importance of the studied Birka ring is that it most eloquently corroborates ancient tales about direct contacts between Viking Age exchange of goods, culture, ideas, and news much more efficiently than indirect trade involving several merchants in-between." For the stone we must remember that even though colored glass  might today be perceived as a fake material of lower value, this was not necessarily so in the past. Years ago in the Levant it was still an exotic material in Viking Age Scandinavia. " The researchers also stated that this ring is the only ring with an Arabic inscription ever found at a Scandinavian archaeological site.