Portmahomack welcomes back Viking hoard after 135 years

Tarbat Discovery Centre is displaying a collection of coins and silver bracelets until October following a loan of the hoard from the National Museums of Scotland

Curator Alice Blackwell from National Museums Scotland installs the special exhibition
Author: John RosePublished 4th Jul 2024

The Tarbat Discovery Centre in Portmahomack welcomes home a significant treasure with the return of the Tarbat Viking hoard, which consists of medieval coins and silver bracelets.

Back in 1889, a gravedigger was working in the graveyard that surrounds the museum and unearthed the hoard – three complete silver armlets, known as ‘ring money’, fragments of three others, and six silver coins.

One of the silver coins was minted in England and is Anglo-Saxon dating to c. 959-75 AD. The other coins are Frankish (from Western Europe) and date to c. 846-79 AD. The hoard was found in the crevice of a wall at a depth of 5-to-6 feet.

Experts think it belonged to a Viking and was buried between 990 and 1000 AD, probably for safekeeping.

The silver bracelets are known as ‘ring money’ because Vikings commonly wore their wealth. Silver would be melted down and shaped into bracelets, with the value of the silver calculated by its weight. The armlets were weighed on a balance along with other silver objects, coins, or hacksilver and traded for goods. The four bracelets on display are thinner examples than similar ones found in other Viking Age hoards and are in unusually good condition.

The special exhibition of the hoard at the Tarbat Discovery Centre begins 25th anniversary celebrations of the museum.

Centre Manager Dr Mairi MacPherson, said "It really is a thrilling collection and it is in really good condition so you get a very good idea of what people were handling a millennium ago

"The curators installed it for us and it has been a lot of hard work in the process to get to this point

"A lot of preparation went into it and we thought long and hard about how to display it and show its importance"

Although it was a chance discover Dr MacPherson hopes that some people will debate how it came to be in Easter Ross, as they have nothing else to determine its location.

"It's one of those things where we really wish we had a record of what it was like in-place

"We only have the stories of them finding it and sending it away, so we have no idea about what it looked like in the wall

"We don't know if he buried it to keep it safe or to stash it away, or because it's a religious site, we don't know if it was an offering

"If this was a find nowadays recording all these things, like where it was found, the location, and how close things are together would tell us if it was one person's things or several people

"It really makes us imagine what that time was like"

The collection is on loan from the National Museums Scotland and will be on display in the Tarbat Discovery Centre until October.

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