sköldbuckla

The shield boss has a wide flange and a smooth dome which makes it belong to Hjardar & Vike's Type E - although it has rather high vertical walls and a flatter top, there is not well-defined "neck" between the flange and the dome. The boss is unusual in that is has a hole at the centre of the dome. The hole is 4.9 mm in diameter, and appears to have been punched out from the inside: there is a little swell of the metal around it, and a small lip at the edge of the hole. No signs show that this hole would not be contemporary to the construction of the boss.
The boss was attached to the shield by at least three large rivets or nails (the surviving two, which stick out about 5 mm below the flange, show no signs of riveting or clenching, so the exact attaching method is unknown). The two surviving rivets/nails have heads with a diameter of 12mm, but one has a smooth, domed head, while the other one has a flat, rather cylindrical head. A third, large hole (5.5 mm in diameter) in the flange makes an almost perfect equilateral triangle with the two rivets. Such a triangular arrangement is possibly quite rare. However, there is possibly a fourth, smaller (4 mm in diameter) hole in the flange, about 90° from the larger hole, and 30° from the domed rivet. This smaller hole is located in a damaged section of the flange, and a crack runs though it, but its edges seem regular enough to exclude the possibility of random rounded hole due to corrosion. The role of the fourth hole is unknown./Dr Jan Okisz 2019-12-02