Strathclyde in the Viking Age

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Fragment of a Celtic stone cross from Cambusnethan, North Lanarkshire, Scotland. This is the only surviving section of the cross-shaft. It was carved in the Viking period (c.950 AD) by a stonemason of the ‘Govan School’ of sculpture in the kingdom of Strathclyde. Illustration from The Early Christian Monuments of Scotland (1903).

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[ NEWS ] The discovery of this 10th-century Viking sword in Norway led to a major surprise

Last year, the discovery of an ax head on a mountaintop overlooking Norway’s Trondheim Fjord led archaeologists to a tenth-century Viking grave. Though they found no remains, the team recovered a sword and a shield boss. The discovery seemed routine, until the boss was X-rayed. “We could see there was stuff in there,” says archaeologist Ingrid Ystgaard of the Norwegian University Science and Technology’s Museum of Natural History and Archaeology.

It turned out to contain a leather purse holding Islamic silver coins that were minted in what is now Iraq, along with agates and a small lead weight. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” says Ystgaard. “It’s extremely rare to find coins in Viking burials, and so far as I know, none have ever been found in a shield boss.”  

Ystgaard points out that Vikings were known to travel as far as Constantinople, and the agates and coins could have been obtained through either trading or raiding. Extensive marks on the sword and shield boss show that they had been used in combat, but the lead weight secreted inside suggests the warrior may have at least occasionally played the role of merchant.

[ CONTINUED READING… ]

Source: Copyright © 2015 Archaeology Magazine, a Publication of the Archaeological Institute of America

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Lewis Chessmen by flambard on Flickr.

Chess Pieces - made in Norway (c. CE 1150-1200) Found on the Isle of Lewis, Outer Hebrides, Scotland

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Front cover of the published version of Dr Alex Woolf's 2006 Govan Lecture.

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The English king Athelstan meets the kings of Alba and Strathclyde, together with the lord of Bamburgh and the Welsh king Hywel the Good, beside the River Eamont near Penrith on 12th July 927. Illustration by Archibald Webb (1887-1944).

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Front cover of Stephen Pollington's book on Tamworth in the Anglo-Saxon period, published in 2011 by Tamworth Borough Council.

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Fragment of a hogback tombstone of the Viking Age at Lowther Church, Cumbria. The carvings show a mixture of Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian styles. Photograph by WL Fletcher (1899).

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Saint Edmund the Martyr, king of East Anglia, was murdered by Vikings in AD 869. This medieval illustration shows him being dragged from his throne.

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Nineteenth-century illustration of a Viking attack on Paris

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Front cover of the published version of Professor Barbara Crawford's 2004 Govan Lecture on hogback tombstones of the Viking Age.

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AD 916: Alfred the Great's daughter Aethelflaed, the Lady of the Mercians, meets Welsh prisoners after capturing the royal settlement on Llangorse Lake. Illustration by Richard Caton Woodville in Hutchinson’s Story of the British Nation.

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Govan and its Early Medieval Sculpture, edited by Anna Ritchie (published in 1994). A collection of papers on the historical and archaeological significance of the 31 carved stones of the Viking period at Govan Old Parish Church in Glasgow.

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The Mercian ruler Aethelflaed, daughter of Alfred the Great, watches as her army attacks the Welsh settlement on Llangorse Lake (AD 916). Illustration by Richard Caton Woodville in Hutchinson's Story of the British Nation.

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Masha.