Vale of work hoard

Viking objects set near Harrogate, Yorkshire On the surface, e trulything is idyllic imagine a broad green line in Yorkshire. In the distance rolling hills, woods and a light morning mist its the epitome of a peaceful, unchanging England. provided scratch this surface or more than appropriately, rock a metal detector e realwhere it and a very unalike England emerges, a land of violence and panic, not at solely warm behind its defending sea, but terrifyingly vulnerable to invasion.And it was in a field like this, 1,100 years ago, that a frightened man bury swell collection of fluid, jewellery and coins, that linked this part of England to what would then confine knowmed unimaginably distant parts of the world to Russia, the tenderness East and Asia. The man was a Viking, and this was his entertain. Suddenly, a metal detector in a field in Harrogate uncovers this extraordinary treasure (Michael Wood) l crouched good deal in the soil and you could run into the edge of a few coins sticking egress of the top of it (Andrew Whelan) There, jammed in, ar these hundreds of coins and these arm- beleaguers, these pieces of silver. (MW) allot it in a sandwich box, wrapped it all(prenominal) up, and took it home. (AW) Youre right at that place with this material, that can take you back to that tremendous meaning in English history, when the kingdom of England was first created. (MW) things you dream of, but you dont actually expect to happen. (AW) This week were sweeping crossways the vast expanse of europium and Asia between the ninth and the thirteenth centuries.And once over again were not freeing to be focussed on the Mediterranean were dealing with two large arcs of make do hotshot that begins in Iraq and Afghanistan, ises north into Russia and ends here in Britain, and anformer(a)(prenominal) in the south, spanning the Indian Ocean from Indonesia to Africa. The weeks objects range from todays precious Viking treasure from Yorkshire to a few pottery fragments from a beach in Africa. Between them, they contribute to life the travellers, the condescensionrs and the raiders who helped to forge this world.When you use the voice communication traders and raiders, one group of the smashing unwashed above all springs to mind the Vikings. Vikings have always excited the European imagination and their reputation has fluctuated violently. In the ineteenth century, the British saw them as barbarous bad guys horn-helmeted rapers and looters. For the Scandinavians, of course, it was different the Vikings there were the all-conquering heroes of Nordic legend. The Vikings then went finished a stage of being seen by historians as rather civilised more tradesmen and travellers than pillagers in fact they became almost cuddly.This recent discovery of the Vale of York heap up makes them seem a bit less cuddly and looks set to refurbish the aggressive Vikings of popular tradition, but now with a dash of wid ely distributed glamour. And the truth, I think, is that thats what the Vikings have always been just about glitz with violence. The England ot the early was split up between territories occupied by the Vikings most of the north and the east epoch the south and the west were controlled by the great AngloSaxon kingdom of Wessex.The re-conquest of the Viking territories by the Anglo-Saxons was the great event of one-tenth-century Britain, and our treasure both pinpoints one tiny part of this interior(a) epic, and connects it to the immense world of Viking trade. The hoard was found in the winter of 2007. Heres ather and son, David and Andrew Whelan, who were metal-detecting in a field to the south of Harrogate, in north Yorkshire. It was a representative dreary January day, in a muddy rough ploughed field.It was a field that we wouldnt normally go in because were never really found anything good in there, we tend to buzz off dozens of Victorian buttons, but it was either that or go home, so (Andrew Whelan) This time we were there about ten minutes and thats when I got my signal the big one I started finding lead at first. I dug down a bit more, and I kept going, and I get more lead, ore lead, and all of a sudden, this round thing fell into the bottom of the tidy sum came out from the side, so Id actually Just missed it.It fell into the bottom of the hole and I thought, Oh dear, Ive found an old ball cock, Ive got a lead cisterna with an old ball cock. So I picked this round thing up, and put it on top of the ploughed land, I put my glasses on, and I looked at it, and I could see all these animals on the cup, and all these bits of silver in the top. (Dave Whelan) l crouched down in the soil, and you could see the edge of a few coins sticking out of he top of it and there was a coin of Edward the Elder, I think on top. (Andrew Whelan) The hoard that David and Andrew Whelan had found was contained in this beautifully worked silver bowl, about the siz e of a small melon. Astonishingly, it contained over 600 coins, all silver, and roughly the same size as a cutting-made pound coin, but wafer thin. Theyre mostly from Anglo-Saxon territory, but there are also some Viking coins produced in York, as well as foreign imports from western Europe and Central Asia. Along with the coins was Jewellery arm-rings one grand and five silver ones.And then, theres the ingredient that makes it absolutely certain that this is not an Anglo-Saxon but a Viking hoard theres what we call hack silver chopped- up fragments of silver brooches and rings and thin silver bars, mostly about an indium (2. 5 cm) long, that the Vikings used as currency. The hoard pitches us into a recognise moment in the history of England, when an Anglo-Saxon baron Athelstan at know defeated the Viking invaders and built the beginnings of the kingdom of England. Above all, it shows us the range of contacts enjoyed by the Vikings while they were running northern England. These Scandinavians were tremendously well connected, as the historian Michael Wood makes clear Theres a Viking arm-ring from Ireland, theres coins minted as far away as Samarkand and Afghanistan and Baghdad. And this gives you a sense of the reach of the age these Viking kings and their agents and their trade routes spread across western Europe, Ireland, Scandinavia. You read Arab accounts of Viking slave dealers on the banks of the Caspian Sea Gull the Russian so-called because of his Russian hat, and he was Irish this guy, you know dealing in slaves out there on the Caspian, nd those kind of trade routes the river routes down to the Black Sea through Novgorod and capital of the Ukraine and these kind of places you can see how in a very short time, coins mint ed in Samarkand, dictate, in 915, could end up in Yorks 2 hire in The Vale of York hoard makes it clear that Viking England did indeed operate on a transcontinental scale. Here is a dirham from Samarkand, and there are se parate Islamic coins from central Asia. Like York, Kiev was a great Viking city, and there merchants from Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan traded their goods via Russia and the Baltic to the hole of northern Europe.In the process, the people around Kiev became very rich. An Arab merchant of the time describes them making neck-rings for their wives by melting down the metal(prenominal) and silver coins theyd amassed from trade Round her neck she wears gold or silver rings when a man amasses 10,000 dirhams, he makes his wife one ring when he has 20,000 he makes two and often a woman has many an(prenominal) of these rings. And, indeed, theres a fragment of one of these Russian rings in the hoard. Although Kiev and York were both Viking cities, contact between them would only very rarely ave been direct.Normally the trade route would be constructed through a series of relays, with spices and silver coins and Jewellery moving north, as amber and fur moved in the other direction, and at ever y stage there would be a profit. But this trade route also carried the dark side of the Vikings reputation. All through eastern Europe, the Vikings captured people to sell as slaves in the great merchandise of Kiev which explains why in so many European languages the words for slave and Slav are to this day still so virtually connected.But this hoard also tells us a great deal of what as happening back in York. There, the Vikings were becoming Christian but, as so often, the vernal converts were reluctant to abandon the symbols of their old religion the Norse gods were not entirely dead. And so, on one coin minted at York around 920, we find the sword and name of the Christian St Peter, but intriguingly the i of Petri Peter is in the shape ofa hammer, the emblem of the old Norse god, Thor. Its a coin that shows us that the new faith uses the weapons of the old.We can be elegant certain that this treasure was buried soon after 927. In that year, the AngloSaxon Athelstan, King of Wessex, finally defeated the Vikings, conquered York, and get the homage of rulers from Scotland and Wales. It was the biggest political event in Britain since the departure of the Romans. And the hoard contains one of the silver coins that Athelstan issued to celebrate it. On it, he gives himself a totally new title, never used before by any ruler Athelstan Rex totius Britanniae Athelstan, King of all Britain. The modern idea of a united Britain starts here.Heres Michael Wood again The wonderful thing about the treasure is that it hones in on the very oment that England was created as a kingdom and as a state. The early tenth century is the moment when these, what we might call national identities, start to be used for the first time. And thats why all the later kings of the English, whether it was Normans or Plantagenets or Tudors, looked back to Athelstan as the founder of their kingdom. And in one sense you could say they go back to that moment in 927. But it was a pretty messy moment, and the hoard demonstrates that the struggle between Viking and Anglo-Saxon wasnt yet over.The treasure certainly belonged to a ich and powerful Viking, but he must have stayed on in Yorkshire under the new regime, because some of the coins in his hoard were minted by Athelstan in York in 927 Something must then nave gone awry(p) tor our Viking, which led him to bury the hoard but he did it so carefully that he must have intended to return. Was he killed in the ongoing skirmish between Vikings and Anglo-Saxons? Did he go back to Scandinavia, or on to Ireland? Whatever happened to 3 the treasure-owner, most of the Vikings in England stayed on and, in overdue course, were assimilated.In north-east England today, places with names ending in by and thorpe like Grimsby and Cleethorpes are living survivals that still speak of the long Viking presence. And the Vale of York Hoard reminds us that these places were also the end or the beginning of a huge trade route tha t around 900 stretched from Scunthorpe to Samarkand. In the next programme, well be on a different trade route, but one that also links the Middle East and northern Europe. Well be in Poland, with a Christian angel and a miraculous glass that turned water into wine.