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LiveScience
LiveScience
Tom Metcalfe

1,000-year-old 'king' game piece with a distinctive hairstyle is 'as close as we will ever get to a portrait of a Viking'

A Viking figurine carved from walrus ivory. The carving has parted hair, big eyes and a mustache. .

The 1,000-year-old "king" piece from a Viking board game is one of the few depictions of a ruler from the Viking era, according to a new analysis.

"The figure is depicting a late tenth-century king," Peter Pentz, an archaeologist at the National Museum of Denmark, told Live Science. The piece dates to the reign of one of the most famous Viking kings, Harald Bluetooth (circa A.D. 958 to 986); and it was found within his realm, which included parts of southern Norway and Sweden.

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