The Skaill Hoard

The largest Viking silver hoard ever found in Scotland turned up in 1858 when a boy chasing a rabbit into its burrow on the Bay of Skaill in Orkney pulled out silver instead, more than eight kilos of arm-rings, brooches and coins, buried around AD 950. The same bay holds Skara Brae, the astonishing 5,000-year-old stone village older than the pyramids. Orkney is layered with Norse and Neolithic treasure like nowhere else in Britain.