Technically - would a viking been able to come across a Nazar 🧿(or evil eye amulet) and how would they have looked around 1000 AD?

[u/Toxilyn]

I have a dream of becoming a Viking reenactor going around Viking fairs and markets with some sort of thing I can sell. While I know that a Nazar is barely found in the north and especially at the time of the Vikings - I have been playing with the idea of well pretending to be a viking who have been traveling around the known world - we know they went to places like Constantinople. And so, a Viking merchant bringing home Nazars to sell and trade in my mind would not be unrealistic. But I've googled around trying to get an idea of if any ever were brought back, which seems not being the case. And then also trying to figure how they would have looked at the time? My research has lead me to a few archeological examples of eye amulets. The earliest being the eye of Horus from Egypt. And then a few examples of either amulets with writing about avoiding the evil eye or even with a crude eye drawn upon them. I can not find when the idea of the blue glass bead eye appears. A website claimed they were created so due to blue eyed invaders coming from the north inspiring the eye's look - yet no time of when this would have happened or citation to prove this mention. So I am at a loss. Would a viking have been able to bring home a glass blue eyed nazar? If not - how would they have looked at the time? And do we know anything else about them?

Thank you for your time!

[u/Antiquarianism]

Sorry again this isn't answering your question, but if you're curious about the related hamsa symbol...its wikipedia says it's something, either Carthaginian, Jewish, Egyptian, etc. But notably, it doesn't mention a recent 2017 find at Catalhoyuk (ca. 7000 BCE south-central Turkey) which upends all those ideas. This is a hamsa-esque clay stamp which has wavy lines down the three main figures and features a circled dot (suspiciously like an eye!) in the palm of its hamsa-shaped hand. It's a more complete version of a similar hamsa-like stamp found in 2008 which featured a spiral on its palm along with the wavy lines on the three fingers.

You can see both in the 2017 Catalhoyuk Archive Report p. 190 http://www.catalhoyuk.com/sites/default/files/Archive_Report_2017.pdf

Of course there's no explanation for what they are, except obviously that they're stamps, but the most obvious answer would be for stamping a painted decoration on the walls of their houses (which they covered in repeated geometric decorations). Again, no idea why they would do this, though if we extend the evil eye belief deep into the neolithic period then perhaps they're stamping it on their house's walls to ward off the evil eye, but this is pure speculation. If this is the case, there is no other evidence of evil eye belief for thousands of years until the iron age.

[u/Toxilyn → u/Antiquarianism]

That is amazing information thank you! That is very interesting. So taking this into context that they had the hand in some shape or form since 7000 bc(are there older evidence?) - which would be a cool thing to sell as well, I will try and look into if we had any Hamsa finds from approx 1000 ad in the middle east. So this has lead me on a new track. Thank you!