The Silverdale Hoard

This weekend, I went to have a look at the Silverdale Hoard at the Lancaster City Museum.  It is a collection of Viking silver that was found in Silverdale by a metal detectorist (how exciting must that have been to find?!).  It is apparently the third largest hoard of Viking silver found in the UK and includes a variety of coins, arm rings and metal bars.  1,000 years ago a Viking must have decided to bury the silver for safe-keeping and for whatever reason wasn’t able to come back and collect it – probably an unhappy ending for them.  

The silver was all quite beautiful and I felt strangely connected to it – the person who made it clearly used techniques that we still use now.  The thing I did notice though was how thick the silver was on some of the arm bands, they must have been heavy to wear - I suspect thought that they were probably made for men (most of them would have slipped right off my arm).