The ancient runes of engraved silver armbands in the treasure trove of buried Vikings in Scotland help to reveal more about places and times that have been almost lost to history.
“The storage has ripple effects. We want to rethink what was in the area,” says Martin Goldberg, curator of the National Museum of Scotland.
The silver armband was part of a buried treasure, including ornate gems, gold and silver bullion, silk, and painted beads discovered in southwestern Scotland.
Experts have transcribed some of the runes, but have not been able to translate the longest runontic lighting in one silver band until now.
Galloway’s Reservoir
Metal detector enthusiasts discovered Galloway’s storage in 2014 in a field not too far from the standing church in Balmagee, Kirkkud Brightshire, in southwestern Scotland.
Enthusiasts reported the discoveries to authorities, and the Treasury unit of the National Museum of Scotland began excavation, and ultimately discovered the above. About 11 pounds of silver, gold and other ingredientsIt’s buried in several packages. The reservoir appeared to be intentionally buried in ruins of some structure. Archaeologists have found evidence of holes in timber buildings for a long time since it rotted. But they weren’t sure it was home or something else.
“It’s almost a hoarding storage,” Goldberg says. “Organic ingredients are rarely surviving.”
Researchers believe the reservoir was buried around 900 AD. This is when the region is undergoing turbulence. The Vikings had begun to conquer and move to parts of Scotland in 800 AD before 900 AD, but Galloway was still part of the Kingdom of Northumbria. The Vikings took Galloway around 900 AD.
“It was a real state of cultural mobility back then,” Goldberg says. “The storage captures this moment of change.”
Partly due to turbulent times, during which many of Northumbria’s modern records were absent.
“This reservoir was actually added at a time when there was little historical information over the centuries,” Goldberg says.
read more: The Vikings were not just raids and looting – they also had diplomacy and trade networks
Rune translation
Previously, researchers had translated runes into several arm bands, but found that they contained shortened parts of the Anglo-Saxon name, like Ed. It probably stands for Edward or Edgar.
However, the end of these armbands was not decided for a while. It had a longer inscription and although researchers could have translated individual letters, they didn’t seem to make sense.
The two puncture marks on the ring ultimately gave the translator a clue as to how to decipher it. They realized that these puncture marks work like the way that is sometimes done in English today, and that they are likely to be useful by shortening certain words left behind from the inscription.
Researchers now believe that everything says, “This is the wealth of the community.”
Viking family heirlooms and trade networks?
Researchers can’t really know who buried the hoarding, Goldberg said. But they have a better idea of who plunder.
On the one hand, it’s hardly a buffet for hoarding. Some of the metalwork is Anglo-Saxon in the southern UK, with silk coming from Southwest Asia. The fact that the reservoirs came from the Vikings has something to do with the variety that was buried there across the Viking Empire.
“What the Viking era creates is part of this international trade network,” Goldberg says.
Some of the treasures that I dated during this period seem to be rushing, for example, as if someone were trying to hide their wealth in a moment of crisis, but Galloway’s storage space looks different. There are four separate plots buried in some kind of building, not in the forest somewhere. Many things, including the ship and its contents, were carefully buried. They could have even been family heirlooms, Goldberg says.
The objects in the reservoir may represent goods that have been plundered by Vikings from nearby people. However, it is also possible that they were buried by locals who had just acquired these objects through the Viking Trade Network.
“We get a glimpse of the thousands of cast members who have put together a collection like this,” Goldberg says.
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Joshua Rapp Learn is an award-winning DC-based science writer. As an expatriate Albertan, he has contributed to many scientific publications such as National Geographic, The New York Times, The Guardian, New Scientist, Hakai and more.
