The Portable Antiquities Scheme

The exciting Viking hoard that was announced earlier this year, has just been featured in the AIA’s magazine.

In a muddy field near the town of Harrogate in northern England, father-and-son metal detectorists David and Andrew Whelan made a remarkable discovery: the largest and most spectacular Viking treasure hoard found in Britain for 150 years. It is made up of 617 silver coins from as far away as Afghanistan, Russia, and Scandinavia, as well as 65 other objects, including arm bands (one gold), ingots (metal bars), and pieces of chopped-up (”hack”) silver–all contained in an exquisite silver vessel. “At first dad presumed [the vessel] was an old ball cock [the round plastic float that controls the flow of water in a toilet] because he didn’t have his glasses on,” says Andrew Whelan, a 35-year-old surveyor from Leeds. But they realized they were onto something special when they saw a penny with an image of the Anglo-Saxon king, Edward the Elder. “Within two minutes it had gone from being an average day to something beyond our wildest dreams. We were stunned and started to shake slightly,” he recalls.

To read the rest, visit their website, or better still subscribe and support their work. There’s a couple of errors in the text of Kate’s article. Most notably, we don’t pay a cash incentive to encourage recording. Items that are possibly Treasure could result in a reward shared between the finder and the landowner.

OpenCalais helped to tag this with: Afghanistan • Andrew Whelan • Britain • David Whelan • Edward • father-and-son metal detectorists • Harrogate • Leeds • metal bars • Russia • Scandinavia • United Kingdom

Possibly related posts: Most important Viking Treasure in 150 years found by metal detectorists in North Yorkshire • Roman hoard unearthed • BBC History Magazine •