Vikings were like ants: raided everybody and everything and buried the loot for better times. And as they could all die during their bravery acts, some Viking treasures remained hidden till nowadays. Now one of the biggest Viking treasures ever has been found on an English farm by a father-son team of treasure hunters. It appears that the treasure which is over 1,000 years old contains items from Ireland, France, Russia and Scandinavia, confirming the long raids for loot.
"It's a fascinating find, it's the largest find of its type of over 150 years. 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." said Gareth Williams, an expert at the British Museum who examined the items.
The discoverers, David Whelan, 60 and his son Andrew, 35,
found the treasure in a farm field near Harrogate (northern England) on January 6th using a metal detector. They found a silver bowl located more than a foot (0.33 m) under the soil.
They reported the 9th-century gilt silver bowl to authorities and the archaeologists found it was filled with coins and jewelry. The bowl could have been seized by Vikings from a French monastery and employed as an improvised treasure chest.
"We thought it was marvelous. But we didn't know for nearly a month what was in it." David Whelan told The Associated Press.
617 coins and dozens of other objects, including a gold arm band, silver ingots and fragments of silver were discovered in and around the bowl. The coins are related to Islam and to the pre-Christian religion of the Vikings, as well as to Christianity.
"The hoard is of global significance. Some of the coins mixed Christian and pagan imagery, shedding light on the beliefs of newly Christianized Vikings," said Gareth Williams, a curator of early medieval coins at the British Museum.
"The booty was likely accumulated through a combination of commerce and warfare. Its quantity indicated that at least some of it was taken by force, perhaps in raids on northern Europe or Scandinavia," he added.
The items were made as far afield as Afghanistan, Russia and Scandinavia.
The Vikings raids started in the 8th century and lasted for about three centuries, spreading throughout Europe, from modern day Spain to Ireland and Turkey. Sometimes, they caused real invasions, founding Viking kingdoms in Great Britain, Ireland, Italy (in Sicily) and France (Normandy), among other places.
The archaeologists believe the loot was hidden in a period which coincides with the fall of the Viking Kingdom of Northumbria in 927 by the Anglo-Saxon king Athelstan. Vikings used to bury their wealth in times of trouble.
The museum intends to buy at least some of the hoard from the Whelan family. The hoard is under conservative estimate about £750,000 (1,114,000 Euro, $ 1,537,000). The finders are entitled to half of the treasure's worth and the landowner to the other half.
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