Metal: sterling silver (925)
Weight - approx. 30 g (1 oz)

Gullinbursti (meaning "Gold Mane" or "Golden Bristles") is a boar in Norse mythology.

When Loki had Sif's hair, Freyr's ship Skidbladnir, and Odin's spear Gungnir fashioned by the Sons of Ivaldi, he bet his own head with Brokkr that his brother Eitri (Sindri) would not have been able to make items to match the quality of those mentioned above.

So to make gifts to Freyr, Eitri threw a pig's skin into a furnace as Brokkr worked on the bellows, and together they manufactured the boar Gullinbursti which had bristles in its mane that glowed in the dark.

The Svinfylking were a Viking warrior cult dedicated to the Boar; like the Berserkers (‘bear warriors’) and the Ulfhednar (‘wolf warriors’), this elite band drew spiritual strength from their totemic animal. To break a shield wall its members fought in a wedge-shaped formation fronted by two champions, the Rani (‘snout’), and the Old English word eofor (‘Boar’) was used figuratively for a ‘persistent and determined lone warrior’

During the Dark Age period boar images abound in both ‘art’ and literature; it was thought that a Boar on a helmet would guard the life of the warrior wearing it. There is a description in Beowulf, of an ornamented helm.