The Viking-Age Galloway Hoard

Abstract

• The Galloway Hoard is one of the most spectacular Viking-Age hoards ever discovered, its multiple packages and layers containing not only a huge volume of remarkable silver and gold jewellery and a stunning lidded silver vessel, but also an astonishingly rare collection of the organic materials - in this case, silk, leather, wool, animal gut, wood, and some very special dirt - that almost never survive from the early medieval world. In this episode, join National Museum of Scotland Galloway Hoard Researcher Dr. Adrián Maldonado as he interweaves the archaeology and history of a magnificent treasure trove deposited in c. AD 900 by unknown hands in a turbulent and vivid area of south-west Scotland. The Galloway region in which the hoard was deposited was a blurry mix of cultures and languages, ranging from Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon to Irish, Scottish and British. Reflecting this multicultural environment, the hoard's contents, which seem to come from as far apart as Central Asia and Ireland, raise more fascinating questions than they answer about who was living, fighting and dying in this most dramatic and mutable part of the Viking world. As we learn, the project to unwrap the Galloway Hoard is only just beginning, with multiple agencies and experts called to Scotland to delve deeper and deeper into both the hoard and its secrets! Who, then, buried this most eclectic and remarkable of hoards? It was once presumed that it was a band of Vikings, but the answer, as Adrián tells presenter Dr. Tom Horne and Producer Luke Barry, may very well surprise you...