LOT 0563

Viking Silver Hack 'Hoard' Group

9TH-11TH CENTURY AD

Chatelaine: 3 3/4" (Silver: 2.1 kg, ceramics: 1 kg, chatelaine: 91mm overall).

A hoard of silver and ceramic items comprising: a chatelaine with pendants (ear-scoop, tweezers, hammer, pelta-shaped plaque, axe-head); a group of twenty-nine small fittings and fragments; seventeen belt fittings (buckles, clips, stiffeners) and bell-shaped studs; seventeen wire hair-rings; a group of small coins and fragments including dirhems and an English short-cross penny of Ethelred II converted to a pendant with suspension loop; thirteen larger dirhem coins; twenty-eight dress fittings with pendants and earrings; six penannular hoops, two annular and a knop finial; three twisted rod arm-rings, two with curved flange finial; fourteen mainly twisted rod bracelets and fragments; twenty-one large pieces of hack-silver and ingots; forty-eight smaller ingot fragments, bars and a looped wire; twenty ingots, mainly square- and D-section; a quantity of irregular molten silver lumps; a quantity of coarse ceramic fragments (the vessel in which the hoard was stored?). [393 (330 silver, 63 ceramics), No Reserve]

From the family collection of a London gentleman; formed in continental Europe during the late 1940s-1950s; thence by descent.

See Hårdh, B. Silver in the Viking Age. A Regional-Economic Study, Acta Archaeologica Lundensia no.25, Stockholm, 1996 for discussion.