
One of Britain’s finest Viking silver hoards, found 1858
One of the finest hoards of Viking silver ever found in Britain turned up in March 1858, when an Orkney boy, David Linklater, was out catching rabbits at Skaill in Sandwick and found silver down a rabbit hole: fifteen pounds of it in 115 pieces, mostly jewellery, with twenty-one coins among them. It was buried in the later tenth century, in the heyday of the Earldom of Orkney, and National Museums Scotland holds it today. 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.
Bay of Skaill (Orkney, Scotland)
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