All that glitters is not gold: Multi-instrumental identification of Viking Age orpiment (As2S3) from Surtshellir cave, Iceland

Abstract

Fragments of orpiment (As2S3) from a Viking Age structure inside Iceland’s Surtshellir cave represent the farthest-known occurrence of this rare mineral from sources known to have been exploited during the Early Middle Ages. Actual fragments of orpiment (from Latin auripigmentum, golden pigment) are only documented in late first millennium AD northern Europe from Dunadd, the seat of the Dalriadic kings in western Scotland (7th-8th century AD), Tonymore Crannóg, an elite Irish site (8th-9th century AD), and now Surtshellir (AD 920–1020). Ground to create a pigment, orpiment was used to add brilliant yellows to illuminated manuscripts produced from the 7th-10th centuries AD in elite monastic and ecclesiastic centers of Ireland, the Carolingian Empire, and Anglo-Saxon England. Its only prior documented uses in Viking Age Scandinavia, however, are from the furnishings of King Gorm’s grave at Jelling (Denmark), ca. AD 950–960, and possibly the Gokstad ship, ca. AD 900–905. The twelve fragments of orpiment from Surtshellir, verified through pXRF (hand-held X-Ray Fluorescence) and SEM/EDS (Scanning Electron Microscopy with Energy Dispersive X-Ray Spectroscopy), link this site to 10th century AD interaction and trade networks that stretched from the North Atlantic to Anatolia and provide supportive evidence for re-interpreting the cave as an important, elite-controlled ritual site from Iceland’s Viking Age.