Though the Vikings are best known as seafaring warriors, through contact with Europe they grew ever more adept as cavalrymen. Changes in stirrup design gave a tactical advantage in that they permitted a warrior to shift his weight onto the stirrups and thereby wield his weapons with greater height and force. This stirrup, decorated with a distinctive technique of iron inlay, is of a type found in England and may have been introduced in the renewed Viking attacks at the end of the tenth century.

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