This brooch was inspired by a Pictish piece found at a Viking site on Orkney Island dating from the 5th to 8th century AD. The rich patterns created with interlocking spirals were popular in many different cultures, but were an especially important element of Pictish art.
Design Details
This brooch has a diameter of 2” (50 mm) and is available in bronze and sterling silver.
Historical Inspiration
The Picts were a wild and fiercely independent people living in Scotland in the Iron Age and early Middle Ages. What little we know about the Picts comes from Roman accounts and the art they left behind. The Roman historian Herodian wrote "But they puncture their bodies with pictured forms of every sort of animals; on which account they wear no clothing, lest they should hide the figures on their body. They are a most warlike and sanguinary race, carrying only a small shield and a spear, and a sword girded to their naked bodies." The later historian and monk Gildas wrote, "foul hordes…like dark throngs of worms who wriggle out of narrow fissures in the rock when the sun is high and the weather grows warm."
Their skills at the art of war were supreme, and they defeated the Roman attempts to conquer their lands. Indeed, the Picts so terrified their would-be Roman conquerors, that a wall was built along the norther border of the Roman lands in Britain to keep the Picts out!
