ANTIQUE SIGNED NORWEGIAN SOLJE BROOCH WORN FOR PROTECTION 

I've been investigating for more than 45 years and have worked with numerous police departments and agencies across the United States and abroad.  With my children grown, we moved to a smaller home.  Due to space limitations, I began selling off some of my extensive collection from my years of investigating.  Friends suggested that Ebay would provide a venue for these items.  I have an entire storage facility that houses my collection.  You can check my feedback since I've only sold articles in this category.   I am not an antique expert and am describing this item from what I see and with the information provided to me and learned in our investigation.  I have this item in my collection, and all other items I list, strictly due to their association with paranormal activity. 

A Solje is a traditional type of Norwegian jewelry that dates back to ancient times.  Its roots go back to pre-Christian times and the Solje has a specific shape, or design, with symbols to protect the owner.  According to Norwegian folklore, a child wearing a Solje is protected from harm.  Because of this ancient belief, it's customary for a newborn to get several of these Solje as Christening gifts or when they're born.  The jewelry consists of a setting of silver from which small round or teardrop shaped "spoons" in either silver or gold hang from it, moving freely.  The background piece will often have an interesting design, such as a crown top or a scalloped edge.  The piece normally has a repousse style finish which has been hammered from the back to give great detail to the brooch.  Many are also highly filigreed.  Most Solje jewelry is hallmarked.  Most early pieces are marked 830S or 830S NORWAY, which is a hallmark for the metal content, comparable to our mark of 925 for sterling.   Each region of Norway has its own style of Solje.  Solje pieces were used, at one time, to add embellishments to the traditional Norwegian costumes, which are called Bunads.  Even today, Bunads are worn for celebrations.  The Solje pieces were meant to represent the sun and were worn on the collars and cuffs of the Bunads, normally as brooches, or pins.  It wasn't unusual for a Norwegian woman to wear 3 pieces of this jewelry.  She would wear one at her throat, one over her heart, and another at the bodice opening.  This tradition gave the finished garment a unique look.  Pieces of Solje jewelry were often given as wedding presents, for Christenings, birthdays and other special occasions.  The size of the piece is a good indication of the use it may have had.  Smaller pieces, up to about an inch in size, such as a circle brooch that I'll be auctioning off separately, were given to babies and children for protection.  According to Norwegian folk lore, a child wearing silver was protected from harm.  Folklore even states that the metal content in the Solje piece was meant to "ward off trolls".

Larger pieces, like the one being sold in this auction, were worn by women.  It's quite normal for a bride in Norway to receive a piece of heirloom Solje jewelry on her wedding day.  This tradition is comparable to American brides wearing, "something borrowed".  Solje jewelry was also used by men, often as buckles for their shoes.  This is not only the traditional jewelry of Norway that dates back to ancient times, but also the National jewelry of Norway. 

The Solje brooch up for auction is a signed piece and it was a gift to a bride on her wedding day long ago.  This piece was appraised at $200.00 and I would think that price has escalated because it was years ago that it was appraised.  The two circular pieces that form the top of the brooch are symbolic of the bride and groom uniting.  Each large silver circle is surrounded by small silver circles.  The surface of the silver is notched so it has a textured design like real roping.  A round gold disc dangles from each center bottom of the circles.  From that gold domed disc a link connects a delicate filigree flower.  From a petal on each side of the flowers a gold teardrop shape dangles.  A second filigree flower dangles from the first at the bottom of the first.  There are three gold teardrop shapes that dangle from the petals at the bottom of that second flower.  The gold pieces - both the circular disc and the teardrop shapes, are slightly domed.   The beautiful brooch measures just under 1 1/2 inches in diameter from side to side of the two circles at the top of the piece.  It's about 2 3/4 inches tall from top bottom.  The back of the brooch has the antique style "C" clasp, indicative of the age of the piece.  Please have a look at the photos to see this intricate antique better than I can describe it.   To keep your Solje from tarnishing, store it in a zip-lock bag, or air-tight container. 

The antique Solje brooch was a wedding gift to a bride from her grandmother long ago.  That young bride was hidden away in a tiny room at the top of the secret staircase you see pictured in the fourth photo.  To get to that staircase and hidden room, you go through the little doorway shown in the bedroom in the third photo.  Within a month after the bride was married in an marriage arranged by her father, she was locked away in a tiny room shown in the last photo.  The man she married was more than twice her age and very old fashioned.  He paid a huge dowry to the bride's family though, and the father of the bride knew that the well-off merchant would be able to provide for his daughter in high style.  However, the father didn't know much more than the facts that the man had money and was a good businessman.  As far as what he was like, personally, the father wouldn't have any way of knowing in advance.  Little did he know that the merchant had quite a bit of deviant desires.   The poor young bride didn't know the merchant at all and didn't want to marry him but did what was expected of her.  On her wedding night she would begin to get a glimpse of a man with extreme sadistic behavior. 

On the first night of marriage, the naive bride accompanied her new husband to his large, elaborate home.  She had heard that he had servants but saw none when they arrived.  The home was very nice and much more than her family could've ever been able to afford.  But what she didn't realize was that the man made every effort to put a good image of himself out for others to see, but underneath all that, he had waited for many years to find a young bride that he could live out his fantasies with.  Fantasies that weren't the norm back then, for sure, nor would they be the norm today.  The groom ordered his bride to remove her clothing once they were in the bedroom suite.  The young woman had never been with a man before and was very modest.  She told him she would go into the other room and disrobe but he instructed her that he was her husband now and she would not leave the room and must do as he said.  She removed her Solje still pinned on her collar and hesitantly removed her wedding clothes.  The poor, frightened bride did as she was ordered, already feeling that she had made a huge mistake in marrying this man.  He then ordered her to lie on the bed and tied her wrists and ankles to the head board and foot board.  The man then placed a gag over the bride's mouth to muffle her cries and screams.  He proceeded to rape and torture his young bride that night until he was satisfied.  Then he untied her.

The poor bride was so bruised and beaten that she could barely move in the morning.  Yet she knew that she had to get away from the man.  If that was how he treated her on their wedding night, she could only imagine that the treatment was going to get worse.  She wanted nothing to do with the man yet she didn't want to bring shame to her family.  She was torn and as soon as the sun had risen fully, she got dressed and snuck out of the house.  She took a horse and wagon and rode home to her parents.  When she arrived, they were surprised to see their newly married daughter and when she entered the home and dropped into her mother's arms crying, they were even more startled.  The young bride told her mother she had to speak to her in private.  She showed her mother her bruises and told her what had transpired.  The mother thought, perhaps, that her daughter, having been a virgin, fought off her husband and so he resorted to tying her.  Still, that wasn't acceptable and she told her daughter so.  She said that her father would have to have a talk with the man but that the daughter should return home to her groom and speak to him about what behavior she expected of him.  The daughter didn't want to return to the house.  Her mother went out and spoke to the girl's father and he hitched her horse to a wagon and drove her home.  When they arrived, the groom was waiting, angry that his bride had run off without telling him and more so that she had gone running to her parents.

The groom and his father-in-law went inside and sat and talked for a while and the bride waited outside, refusing to go in.  When the two men came out of the house, they were laughing and on very good terms with each other.  The groom went to his bride and apologized to her, explaining that he didn't realize how impatient he was and that he just loved her and wanted her to return to their home.  The father nodded to her to step from the wagon and go in.  The groom helped his new bride down from the wagon.  The father bid the couple farewell and left.  He never realized that it would be the last time he saw his daughter alive.

As soon as the father's wagon was far from the home, the groom began to shout at his bride.  He was outraged that she told on him and that she left the house without his permission.  He slapped her and told her she should be ashamed of herself and ordered her to go to her room and stay out of his site.  The young bride ran from the room crying and went to the bedroom where she had endured all the horrible pain and torture the night before.  A short time later, the man entered the room and literally dragged the young woman up a secret staircase in the back of the little cubby you see pictured in the fourth photo.  She was imprisoned in that room and never again left it.  She endured all sorts of sexual torture and physical abuse night after night in that small attic area.

When the young bride's family didn't hear from her or see her for a few days, they just assumed she had settled into her marriage and was busy setting up house, never suspecting that their daughter was slowly being killed by the man they entrusted her to.  The man would show up at his business every day so no one thought anything was abnormal.  Finally, after a full week went by, the father stopped by the man's shop to inquire about how the couple was faring.  The merchant told the father that all was well and he was most pleased with his new wife.  She had succombed to her wifely duties, he told the father.  The two laughed together and shared a drink.  The husband returned home and reported to his worried wife that all was well.  Still worried about her only daughter, she asked her husband if he had seen their daughter and he responded that he hadn't but that he spoke to her husband and was assured that all was well.

During the second week of not seeing her daughter, the mother was wrought with dread.  She needed to see her child and know, herself, that she was alright.  She wouldn't be able to rest until she had done so.  During the middle of the second week, she decided that she would go to the couple's home during the day when the groom was at work.  Then she could speak to her daughter without him being there and make sure that everything was going along smoothly.  She told her husband her plan and, at first, he told her he didn't think she should do that.  He said that their daughter was just busy tending to a new home and new duties and that his wife should give her time to do so.  His wife insisted and told her husband she was going whether he approved or not - with or without him.  Her husband agreed to make the trip with her.

The parents arrived at the house and knocked on the front door.  No one answered.  They thought that was odd because earlier in the morning, the husband saw the groom opening the door to his shop so he knew he was there.  The pair looked around outside the house, thinking that maybe their daughter had gone outside for a walk or to hang clothes.  When they got around back, they saw that the milk cellar door was open slightly and they went inside.  Their daughter wasn't in the room but they were able to go through the house from there.  They stepped up into the house and called their daughter's name.  The pair walked into the cooking area and called for anyone, thinking that servants might answer.  No one answered.  They proceeded to look around and went upstairs to the second floor of the house when no one answered downstairs.  There they found the bedroom with their daughter's solje still on a trunk near the bed.  Again they called her name out, thinking how odd it was that she wasn't there yet her clothes and belongings were still left as though she never unpacked to settle into her new home.  The small dresser remained empty and the dressing table in the room had only the pin she wore on her wedding night that's up for auction.  They called out for her again and suddenly, they heard a soft rapping sound from above.  They searched the second floor but found no staircase.  They began to leave and decided they must've heard an animal on the roof and would go to town and ask their son-in-law where their daughter was.  Just as they were about to exit the bedroom, they heard the rapping again.  The father went into that small cubby to see if he could hear the sound better and determine where it was coming from or what was making it.  Once inside, he saw that the back of the cubby had a false wall that was a doorway slightly ajar.  He peaked through the opening and saw the secret staircase.  Fear overtook him and he called for his daughter and pulled the heavy wooden door open and raced up the narrow stairway to the attic room.  Horrified, he saw the naked body of his daughter, beaten badly and lying on a mattress on the floor of a tiny chamber.  He barely recognized her because she was so swollen and bruised.  There were items left around the room that he recognized instantly were for torture.  He saw chains and cuffs attached to the wall of the tiny room and a variety of tools that he had only heard about and never seen.  He didn't even know what they all were, but knew that something evil had gone on in that room.  He took off his coat and wrapped his daughter in it.  She could barely speak and couldn't move.  Her father wept as he struggled to carry her down the narrow stairway.  When his wife saw him coming down carrying the broken body of her daughter she nearly fainted.  She grabbed the quilt from the bed and covered her daughter as she cried.  They carried their daughter to their wagon and climbed in.  Her mother held her daughter's lifeless body in her arms the entire way into town to find the village doctor for help.  The parents cried the whole way and prayed that they weren't too late to save their poor child. 

The wagon arrived in town and the father ran to the doctor for help.  The doctor and the father carried the daughter's body in to the doctor's house.  When he saw the shape she was in, he had little hope that she would live but tried his best to treat her.  She had broken bones and had been without food or water and without modern medicine of today, there was little the doctor could do except make her comfortable and clean her wounds, sew her up, splint her arm, and wait.  The mother sat by her daughter's side and her husband said he would return soon.  His wife begged him not to leave.  She didn't need to ask where he was going.  She could see the anger in his eyes and knew he was going to the merchant's shop.  Fearing that her husband might fight with their son-in-law and possibly be injured, as well, she urged him to wait and go to the authorities and not go alone.  The husband kissed her goodbye and told her not to worry.  He kissed his daughter's forehead and told her he was sorry and that he loved her, feeling such guilt for arranging the marriage and then convincing her to return to her husband.  The father left the doctor's home and went to his son-in-law's shop.  He entered the shop and the son-in-law looked up from behind the counter to greet his father-in-law.  The father-in-law told him that he was about to make him pay for what he did to his only daughter and took a gun out and shot the merchant directly in his heart.  The merchant died minutes later but not before the angry father walked over and began to punch him in the face repeatedly.  Finally, someone else went into the shop and pulled the father off the body of the merchant.

Both the daughter and her new husband died that day.  The father was never charged with the murder of his son-in-law.  The parents returned to the house to show the constable the place that their daughter was tortured and imprisoned.  They got their daughter's belongings at that time.

This Solje, and another smaller one that the daughter had been given at birth (which will be auctioned separately), were items that the parents claimed linked their daughter's spirit.  The distraught parents grieved so badly not only because they lost their child, but because they blamed themselves for her death.  They wrote in their family bible that they finally found peace when they began to have visitations from their daughter.  She comforted them and told them not to cry for her, that she was at peace. 

The two solje, which were intended to be protection items, would normally have been passed down to someone else in the family.  Because they linked their daughter, and because of the circumstances of her death, they were never passed down.  When the mother of the daughter died, the son of the couple took these in hopes that he could give them to his own daughter twho never new her aunt.   It was a way of carrying on his family, his grandson told us.  The Solje were given to the brother's daughter years later and when she turned ten.  Her father felt that she was old enough to learn about the aunt she would never meet and to take care of the jewelry.  The daughter loved the two Solje but the same night she was given them, she woke up in the middle of the night to see a woman standing in her room that she had only seen old photographs of.  The next morning, the daughter told her father that her Aunt Crista had visited her during the night.  She told her niece that she loved her.  I was called the following day and asked to take both of the Solje.  The brother and his wife were too frightened by the spirit activity.  In their culture, they were very superstitious and believed that the appearance of the ghost of the deceased relative was a bad omen for their daughter.  They didn't want her cursed and wanted the items, and the activity to be removed from their home.  When we made a trip to Norway in 1972, we had the good fortune of visiting the home where the bride met her fate.  The secret staircase is still there, as is the little room.  Both were left just as they were when the young bride's body was lifted from there.  The family that lived in the house then, claimed to hear a rapping sound from that room on many nights.  They keep a candle lit in the attic room window to help guide the spirit back to the place she left in hopes of letting her know that she would only find love there now and that it was a safe haven for her to rest.

I found these old protection pieces very interesting and had never heard of them before this case.  You can do more research on them if you'd like.  I do know that since I learned about these, I've seen the old ones, like this one, sell for between $200 and $500.00 so I think this is very valuable.  I've never seen two that look alike so I can see where they would indicate the region that it comes from and also make the traditional costume, no matter how alike they were to the next person wearing it, a little different by the Solje brooch that accented the costume.  Long ago, when this was made, the Solje were brooches.  In modern times, today, I've been told that now they can also be found sometimes as earings and pendants but that is rare.  Thank you for looking at this most interesting protection item.  This brooch always made the deceased girl's family believe that when she took this item off, her protection was lost.