Find ancestor attribute of variable

Hello,

Can anybody help out to find the right XPath expression. I need the...
- value of the @type attribute
- of an nearest contentitem node
- which is an ancestor of the $anchor-node variable (=anchor element)


INPUT XML:

1	...
2	<contentitem type="article">		<-- I NEED THIS
ANCESTORS @type value
3	  ...
4	  <anchor name="article1"/>		<-- I HAVE THIS INSIDE
VARIABLE $anchor-node
5	  ...
6	</contentitem>
7	...

I got errors when I tried:

<xsl:variable name="type" select="ancestor::$anchor-node[name(.) =
'contentitem']/@type"/>

Thank you,

R.