Miniature Axe Head
It is made out of a copper alloy, and is undecorated, likely because it is so small that etching anything into it would have been highly difficult. The Portable Antiquities Scheme, cultivated by the British Museum, places the axe’s date range from circa 800ce. to 1100ce., a range which encompasses the entire Viking age.
A warrior could have worn something like this charm in the shape of an axe on his (or her) person, on a necklace, bracelet, or perhaps a belt. This hypothesis is supported by the fact that this axe has a broken attachment loop at its top where a string or small axe handle could have been. It is possible that the weapon pendant was worn to repudiate the Christian faith, which would suggest that the axe was worn during the conversion of Scandinavia in the twelfth century.[3] However, the axe could have simply been decorative or even a nail-cleaner, in which case, its dates remain unclear.
Tiny pendants of tools and weapons much like this axe were worn by continental Germanic peoples as well as Scandinavians prior to the Viking age. According to Audrey Meaney’s book on such amulets, the models used for nail cleaning were often broken from the use. This axe head has no cracks on the “blade” and only exhibits general wear, which might have occurred through exposure to the elements or from oils found on fingers. This suggests that this axe was likely not used to clean nails. Another option is that the axe was used as a symbol of a Nordic god. Amulets with the likeness of Thor’s hammer were fairly popular in Scandinavian graves and likely used as a symbol of devotion to the god. It is possible that this axe head was a part of a similar pendant signifying devotion to a different god. It seems that there is only one god in the Norse pantheon who wields an axe, the god of law Forseti.[4] It is possible that this axe belonged to worshiper of Forseti who wore the axe as a symbol of his (or her) devotion to the god. However, Forseti was a very major god, only mentioned twice in Nordic texts, so this axe being used as a symbol of worshiping him seems improbable. The mostly likely use for this tiny axe head is as a decorative pendant.
