"This image was adapted from one of a pair of astonishingly intricate brooches discovered in Hornelund in Denmark. The delicate tendrils and pear-like central lobes of this piece identify it with the Viking Ringerike style-the final, most highly developed form of the Viking aesthetic. Here, the degree of abstraction is so advanced that the natural elements of the piece (leaves and vines) are almost unrecognizable. For many centuries, the Vikings have been reviled as a race of barbarians. Modern scholarship, however, reveals Viking culture as exceptionally inventive and fertile. "