Origins: The Uppsala Amulet Ring Pendant
This is the pendant that inspired me to write the Origins series. Its a bit of a long story so bear with me!
The Uppsala Amulet Ring pendant has been one of our most popular designs. It is also the one that has perhaps been the inspiration to several reproductions, some of which are erroneously sold as historical reproductions. As a former historical re-enactor it is important for me that there is a record on how this particular design came to being.
Now, with a lot of my work, I do take a lot of inspiration from history. I started out making historical reproductions. I have taken part in some experimental archaelogy and love doing research into ancient metalworking methods. But such work was creatively very stifling, as you where limited to items you could prove existed and methods that would have been available back in the day.
When I started selling on Etsy in 2012 and to an audience outside of historical re-enactment I took creative flight and only used history as a base and the stories and myths as a source of ideas on what to make. Creatively it felt like being a caged bird that was released to fly free.
It is on Etsy that the Pagan and Heathen communities found me and my work became niched into more of a Norse pagan theme. To me as the maker, I felt honoured to be able to create jewellery that had meaning, more than just beauty, status or ornamentation. It had spirit and that spirit was appreciated.
In 2013 I was approached to make a custom order pendant based on an image the customer found on Wikipedia. The image itself was donated to the wikimedia commons, but that doesn't mean that the pendant in it is available for reproduction.
Attribution: Gunnar Creutz, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
So the first call was to find out who made the pendant to check if they would be OK with me making a reproduction. I did manage to get hold of the person who uploaded the picture but he was unable to name the person who made it.
I knew that amulet ring pendants existed, like an amulet ring pendant found in Hesselbjerg in Denmark. This one featured a Thor's hammer, blade and a firesteel. Various other amulet rings can also be found in the online archives of the Swedish Historiska museet. However I was unable to find one that had the combination of a Mjolnir, spear/arrow and sickle.
Upphov: Asp, Yliali, Historiska museet/SHM (CC BY 4.0)
Most of the amulets where Mjolnir and axe shapes. Or just simple bars and very crude axe shapes. Firesteels where popular and I did see one sword as well. But a arrowhead shape and the sickle shape I could not find. Years later I did find one that could be a sickle.
So this left me with the option to redesign the pendant in my own style and as much based on what I knew about historical spears and sickles. Mjolnir I already made.
The spear shape is based on historical spears and I deliberatelly made it much narrower so it would not look as much like an arrow head.
The sickle is the interesting one. There aren't as many sickles that survived, as there are spears, so the main influence on the shape came from a burial on the Orkney islands, made famous by the whalebone plaque found in the grave. The site is known as the Scar boat burial. Click here to go the photo of the sickle.
For someone who spent time growing flax, processing it into a fibre, spinning it into yarn and then weaving it into a piece of cloth, just to understand how long it would take to make a shirt, this felt right.
July 2013 Prototype versions. All rights reserved M.Barran.
So this is how the first Uppsala pendant came into being. At that time it didn't have a name yet. The positions of the pendants where different and the sickle faced the other way. Mind you, the correct way for a right handed person. The orientation I changed later because it looked better the other way.
The pendant was added into my shop on Etsy and I sold a few. One day one of my customers suggested that maybe the order of the pendants could be spear on the left Mjolnir on the middle and Sickle on the right.... because this way the gods are represented in the order they are in our weekdays: Wednesday (Gungnir), Thursday (Mjolnir) and Friday (Freyr sickle).
Another place where I remembered these three gods mentioned together was the description Adam of Bremen, a 11th century monk, gave of the pagan temple in Uppsala. The name of Uppsala, translated to high hall, and so the city currently on the site still carries the name of the old sacred site. I listened to a podcast once where they visited the church in Gamla Uppsala and had a look at the old foundations that are thought to be the foundations of the previous pagan structure. If I could remember this program I would link it here, but what I have is an impression left from over 20 years ago!
This is why I named the the pendant the Uppsala amulet ring. I thought it was a great homage to the history.
The Uppsala pendant is a modern design based on historical finds that are similar. Because this pendant had a story and meaning, it became on of my most popular designs. Over the years I made various versions, ones with extra pendants, in different sizes and forged out of silver. You can still find these in my shop.
and in silver, if its not sold out: https://www.taitaya.com/products/silver-uppsala-amulet-ring-pendant
Forged Silver Uppsala Necklace, M. Barran 2024. All rights reserved.
But there is a price a creative pays for popularity.
Etsy shops, social media, Pinterest, web search, are routinely harvested for ideas on what to manufacture and sell. The more popular and widely seen an item gets, the more likely it is that it is either copied or used as bait for scams. Why pay for a designer, when it is displayed with proof of concept helpfully presented in the form of sales history or likes.
Not once have I been approached and asked, do I mind if my version of the pendant gets reproduced. Instead I once was send a catalogue featuring many of the items I sell in my shop (including the Uppsala pendant) by an overseas metal work manufacturing company, offering to make them for me.
I fully understand that this is the way most companies expand, by outsourcing their manufacturing, but this is not us. There is no way for me to check what metal they use, what are the labour conditions and simply the quality was not there.
But looking at what is out there available now, this manufacturer did find clients to sell their work. For me personally, this pendant doesn't sell as well anymore. Simply because there are now plenty of alternative versions out there at a lower price.
I knew this was a possibility, but I thought that I can always rely on my creativity to come up with new designs and stay ahead that way. But as you can see, the creative process is not just looking at one image and making it. Its hours of research looking at online archives, books, contacting people, figuring out patterns and evolving the design, writing up a description and telling a story.
I got quite a few years of the Uppsala pendant, which I am grateful of. But as my shop is well known, some of my newer products get ripped within months My creativity cannot work so fast as to stay ahead of the game any more. There are days I wonder if it even is worth coming up with a new design, only to find myself undercut, out-produced and out-sold by someone who doesn't even care to be accurate about the provenance?
I don't suppose any of you readers know of anyone hiring a jewellery designer?
Lastly I wanted to adress something I have been struggling with and some of you might have already thought of it whilst reading this.
Do I really have a leg to stand on here? Isn't mine an altered copy of someone elses work sent by a customer? Did I really change the design to make it enough to claim any rights to it?
You can make your own judgement here. I shared my process in part 1 to the best of my recollection. If you want to talk about it further in the comments, I ask you to be courteous for I don't even pretend to have a thick enough skin to withstand what counts as online discourse these days.
Personally I am on the fence. It's an item of spiritual significance, so I don't want any rights to it, but I would like to be recognised for the parts I added to the story, as should the hitherto unknown Swedish smith whos work was featured in the first photo.
But most of all I do not want this pendant to be sold or presented as historical, because in the incarnation I made it, it is not based on a single archaeological find.
