London – One of the biggest Viking treasures ever found has been discovered on an English farm by a father-son team of treasure hunters, the British Museum announced Thursday.
The trove of coins and jewelry was buried more than 1,000 years ago – a collection of items from Ireland, France, Russia and Scandinavia that testified to the raiders’ international reach.
Gareth Williams, an expert at the British Museum, said it was the largest such find in Britain since the 1840 discovery of the Cuerdale Hoard – a mass of 8,500 silver coins, chains and amulets.
David Whelan, 60, and his 35-year-old son, Andrew, were trawling through a farmer’s field near Harrogate, in northern England, on Jan. 6 when their metal detector squealed. The pair began digging, finding a silver bowl more than a foot beneath the soil.
The pair turned the bowl over to archaeological experts, who discovered it was packed with coins and jewelry. The bowl, a 9th century gilt silver container probably seized by Vikings from a monastery, had been used as an improvised treasure chest before being buried.
More than 600 coins and dozens of other objects, including a gold arm band, silver ingots and fragments of silver, were found in and around the container. The items were manufactured as far afield as Afghanistan, Russia and Scandinavia. The British Museum said the loot was hidden sometime after the fall of the Viking Kingdom of Northumbria in 927.
