HOARD

A Viking age hoard consisting of 79 coins (22 of which are fragments) and 13 silver ingot fragments. For records of the individual coins and objects, use the 'Advanced Search' drop-down, and then tick the box for 'Treasure Case'. Input the number 2011T283. This will bring up all of the records.

DISCUSSION The non-numismatic items in the hoard are all of diagnostically Viking manufacture and/or show typically Viking secondary treatment in the form of hacking into pieces for use as bullion, or test marks to establish the quality of the silver. Some of these pieces are generically Viking, while others have particular parallels in Viking finds from northern England, Scotland and around the Irish Sea. The coins come from a mixture of sources, predominantly Anglo-Saxon pennies, with a smaller number of Anglo-Viking pennies, and two Islamic dirhams. This mixture of coin types is again typically Viking, as is the combination of coinage and non-numismatic silver in a single hoard, and there is no reason to doubt that all of the objects reported derive from a single hoard.

A number of comparable Viking hoards have been recorded from tenth-century England, although typically they date from the first three decades of the century, around or before the unification of England under Athelstan in AD 927 (G. Williams, 'Viking Hoards of the Northern Danelaw from Cuerdale to the Vale of York', in J. Graham-Campbell & R. Philpott (eds) 2009, The Huxley Viking Hoard. Scandinavian Settlement in the North West, Liverpool Museum, Liverpool, 73-83). Although a few of the coins (and perhaps some of the non-numismatic objects) date from the early tenth century, both the Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Viking coins show a concentration in the 940s and 950s, reflecting in part the resurgence of Viking power in northern England at this time, culminating in the death of Eirik Haraldsson (normally identified with Eirik Bloodaxe of Norway) in 954 (G. Williams 2010, Eirik Bloodaxe, Saga Bok, Kernavik). However, the presence of a significant number of coins from the end of the reign of Eadred (946-55), and from the reign of Eadwig (955-59), combined with the absence of any coins of his younger brother Eadgar (957/959-975), suggests a deposition date of c. 955-57, after the Viking resurgence had been suppressed. In particular, the hoard shows a continued influx of coins minted in York and/or the East Midlands after the death of Eirik in 954. This is an unusually late date for a Viking hoard from northern England, but western Cumbria almost certainly still lay beyond the borders of the emerging kingdom of England at this time, and the hoard shows greater affinities with Viking hoards of the same period from Scotland, Ireland and the Isle of Man, reflecting the proximity of the Furness area to the economic area of the Irish Sea, as well as the strong evidence for Viking settlement across the north-west in the form of place-names, sculpture and other hoards (J. Graham-Campbell & R. Philpott (eds) 2009, The Huxley Viking Hoard. Scandinavian Settlement in the North West, Liverpool Museum, Liverpool, passim). Within the relatively loosely-controlled bullion economy of this region, this type of material may have circulated longer without being refreshed by more recent coins than would have been possible within the kingdom of England itself, and deposition anywhere within the period 955-c.965 seems plausible, although it is more like that the hoard was deposited towards the earlier end of this period.

Three of the non-numismatic items have been tested for silver content by non-destructive X-ray fluorescence analysis (see Appendix 1 below), in each case revealing a silver content in excess of 90%, far in excess of the threshold of 10% required to meet the terms of the Treasure Act (1996). None of the coins from the hoard have been analysed, but all of the coin types represented within the hoard routinely have a very high silver content, in the same general region as the items tested here.