The Viking hoard was buried in around AD 900 and contains extraordinary items, including brooches, bracelets, pendants and rare relics.
BY AMBARISH AWALE
A remarkable rock crystal jar from the Galloway Hoard, one of the most significant Viking discoveries in the UK this century, will go on public display for the first time later this year at Kirkcudbright Galleries.
Unearthed in 2014 by metal detectorist Derek McLennan near Dumfries , the hoard was buried around AD 900 and contains an extraordinary array of items, including brooches, bracelets, pendants and rare relics.
Among them is the ornate rock crystal jar, which resembles a perfume bottle and features intricate gold embellishments.
National Museums Scotland, which acquired the collection in 2017, revealed the jar had been carefully wrapped in linen, placed in a silk-lined leather pouch, and sealed inside a larger lidded vessel alongside over 20 other precious objects.
Due to the fragile condition of the medieval textiles that encased it, believed to include Scotland’s earliest example of silk, the jar has never before been on display.
Experts believe the jar is linked to the early medieval Christian church . A Latin inscription in gold, translated as “Bishop Hyguald had me made,” is the clearest indication that at least part of the hoard may have originated from a religious community.
While gaps in 9th-century church records prevent precise identification, Hyguald is thought to have been a Northumbrian bishop.
This theory connects the hoard to the early medieval kingdom of Northumbria, which once encompassed Dumfries and Galloway and stretched from Edinburgh to Sheffield.