The UK has bought a thousand-year-old chalice full of silver coins and jewelry and described as the most important Viking find for 170 years.
Words such as “astonishing” and “stunning” were used over and again at an event to mark the news at the British Museum in London on Thursday.
They would probably be shared by the men who found it in a remote field near Harrogate in Yorkshire in the north of England — father and son metal detector enthusiasts David and Andrew Whelan, who now, along with the field’s owner, share the £1.08 million (US$1.76 million) that the find was valued at.
The Vale of York hoard, as it is now known, will be jointly owned by the York Museums Trust and the British Museum in London, which described the find as being of global importance.
The institution’s curator of medieval coinage, Gareth Williams, recalled the huge and growing excitement after the hoard came to the museum in 2007.
“It was clear as soon as the vessel came in that we had something very important. Once we got the X-rays we could see it was packed with silver. Even then, I don’t think we anticipated how much.”
The hoard turned out to be a gilt silver chalice — probably looted or given in terrified tribute by a church or monastery in what is now France. The contents of the chalice amount to a rich Viking man’s life savings, including 617 coins, some from as far away as northern Russia and Afghanistan, and the type of jewelry given by Viking kings as rewards to their warriors, including a rare arm ring.
Who owned the treasure is probably unanswerable, but he was clearly rich. Museum experts believe the Viking probably buried it to keep it safe with the intention of going back for it.
The hoard was buried in approximately 927 during what is a key transitional period in English history. Around that time the Anglo-Saxon King Athelstan — son of Alfred the Great — managed to conquer Viking Northumbria and then, wrongly, began calling himself king of Britain.
The Vikings were not going to take this lying down and Williams believes the hoard’s owner may have been a follower of the Viking leader Guthfrith, who attempted and failed to defeat Athelstan.
“It certainly seems likely that it was buried with the intention of him coming back for it and for whatever reason he did not,” Williams said.
The exact location of the find is not being revealed but it is isolated and remote.
“The hoard seems to have been buried in the middle of nowhere but presumably there was some sort of landmark there, a tree or a big rock to tell him where it was,” Williams said. “Maybe there wasn’t. Maybe that’s why he never recovered it.”
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