A 1,000 year old Celtic disc brooch, thought to have been looted by the Vikings, was found in the British Museum’s stores hidden in a lump of textile and wood.
Curator Barry Ager was examining the lumps, excavated from Lillegerge, Norway, in 1886, when he noticed a short curved length of metal projecting from one of them.
An x-ray revealed, in Ager’s words, “a totally unexpected and beautifully made mount of Irish or Scottish origin”.
The disc brooch will go on display in March in Room 41: Sutton Hoo and Europe AD 300–1100, the Sir Paul and Lady Ruddock Gallery.
It will appear alongside finds from the Sutton Hoo ship burial in Suffolk, which commemorated an Anglo-Saxon king who died in around 600 AD, late Roman mosaics, and a huge copper alloy necklace from the Baltic Sea region.
Curator Barry Ager was examining the lumps, excavated from Lillegerge, Norway, in 1886, when he noticed a short curved length of metal projecting from one of them.
An x-ray revealed, in Ager’s words, “a totally unexpected and beautifully made mount of Irish or Scottish origin”.
The disc brooch will go on display in March in Room 41: Sutton Hoo and Europe AD 300–1100, the Sir Paul and Lady Ruddock Gallery.
It will appear alongside finds from the Sutton Hoo ship burial in Suffolk, which commemorated an Anglo-Saxon king who died in around 600 AD, late Roman mosaics, and a huge copper alloy necklace from the Baltic Sea region.
