'The Viking-age Reuse of Insular Metalwork From Northern Britain'

Abstract

• The looting of Christian shrines and reliquaries in the Viking Age is so well-documented that it has been reduced to a cartoonish vision of pillaging heathens. A close look at the evidence for such ‘looting’ tells a different story – or rather a number of different stories. A recent reassessment of Viking-Age objects in National Museums Scotland shows a variety of different ways Insular metalwork was dispersed and reused in the ninth to eleventh centuries, from hacking to careful curation, and from adaptation to emulation. Along the way, we can try and reconstruct the kinds of objects lost to us by looking at survivals in hoards, graves and stray finds.