It's all in the find

Simon Holmes was at his desk in the Yorkshire Museum when Douglas Ingol brought in the ornate golden arm ring he had stumbled across while going through his late 88-year-old father's effects.

Not knowing what it was, he had sensibly brought the ring in to the museum to be identified. It was taken through to Simon.

"I was working on an email at the time, and it was just placed in front of my nose," Simon recalls. "I was speechless."

He wasn't sure at first what he was looking at, except that it was old and very valuable. It looked like pure gold, in a lovely woven design, and when stretched out was 26cms long. When he hefted it in his hand, it was satisfyingly heavy.

"To see an object like that is a once-in-a-lifetime thing," he says. "It was breathtaking."

His first thought was that it might be an iron age or even bronze age torque for wearing around the neck. But the craftsmanship, while of a high quality, was more crude than other such objects from the period.

After a week of research, Simon - the Portable Antiquities Scheme's finds liaison officer based at the museum - felt reasonably confident the ring wasn't from the Iron Age at all, but from the Viking period. The British Museum confirmed that.

Sadly, little more is known about the ring. Other similar, but smaller, rings have been found, in Dublin, Devon and Norway, which mean it can be dated fairly confidently to the late ninth or tenth century.

But archaeologists know nothing about where it was found. Mr Ingol's father, who had been a builder all his life, had been a "bit of a hoarder" according to his son, and seems to have told no one about the ring before he died.

"He was a builder, so we're guessing that it came from the ground," says Andrew Morrison, the Yorkshire Museum's curator of archaeology. "If we could have found the spot where it was discovered, we could have found out what was associated with it. That could have given us a date, or there might even have been more stuff there. A lot of these kind of objects came from burials. But we've no idea where this was found at all."

That being the case, it is only possible to speculate about who may have owned it.

"It would have been a rich dude," says Andrew. "It is impossible to say who really, but a person of very high status in Anglo-Scandinavian society." A man or a woman? "It could have been anybody. Some objects, like a brooch or weaponry, are gender specific. This sort of thing is not."

But it could have belonged to a Viking king - Eric Bloodaxe, say? Andrew smiles. "There is no evidence to disprove that it could have been Eric Bloodaxe," he says. "But it is very unlikely."

Whoever owned it, the ring has now been declared "treasure" by York coroner Donald Coverdale. It is being valued and is thought to be worth thousands of pounds. Andrew hopes to buy it for permanent display in the museum. "We'd love to acquire it," he says. "It is unique to this area. We've seen nothing like it, and it would add massively to our Viking period collection."

The ring is just the most recent of many priceless treasures that have been discovered by accident or thanks to the efforts of amateur treasure-hunters and metal detectors.

The most famous of those at the Yorkshire Museum, with the possible exception of the Anglian Helmet discovered at Coppergate in the 1970s, is the Middleham Jewel. Gold set with a sapphire, the jewel was found near Middleham Castle by a metal detector in 1985 and is thought to date from the 1430s.

The jewel has a special place in Andrew's heart. He was doing a fortnight's work experience at the Bowes Museum in Barnard Castle when it was brought in for identification. It was covered in soil, with fragments of textile attached to it.

Andrew and the museum's resident archaeologist opened it carefully. "And I thought 'bloody hell'!" he recalls. "Here I was, this 15-year-old school kid, and this was the first ever archaeological object I held in my hands."

Other priceless objects now at the museum brought in by people who found them include a magnificent gilt Anglo-Saxon brooch, found by a Riccall farmer with a metal detector a couple of years ago.

Simon was holding a finds surgery at the museum when the farmer brought in half of the brooch to be identified. The gilt had a lovely soft lustre to it, and was inset with garnets, with empty sockets where other jewels had been. "And I thought 'wow! Now go back out and find the other half!" Simon says.

The farmer duly did. "A week later and 20 feet away he found the other half," says Simon. "It's extraordinary. This was a metal detector find that came from ploughed soil. That means it had been battered about and churned around in the topsoil for decades. And yet when he brought in the second half and we put them together it was a perfect fit. Amazing."

The brooch, Simon says, dates from the early 7th century, and would have originally been made in Kent.

It is well worn, indicating it may have been a much-loved family heirloom passed down through the generations.

What really marks it different from other similar brooches from the period, all of which were made of silver gilt, is that this one is made of gilded copper alloy, a cheaper material. It was almost, Andrew suggests, a piece of costume jewellery of its day.

Another of Simon's favourite pieces, again found by a metal detector, this time in Middleton on the Wolds, is a tiny silver Viking penny - or at least half of a penny, since it has been broken in half down the middle and only once piece survives.

Stamped around the edge are the letters DVRANT, indicating it was made by a Viking "moneyer" - a craftsman whose trade was stamping coins for the King - named Durant.

It is, says Simon, extremely rare, because it is one of only three coins known to have survived from the reign of Regnald Guthfrithson, Viking King of York from 943-944AD. He doesn't seem to have been a particularly successful king, because after a year he was exiled back to Scandinavia and his brother took over as king.

What the coin does do, however, is demonstrate the prestige and importance of York at the time as capital of an important kingdom which minted its own currency.

Simon also likes a more recent find - eight Elizabethan silver coins, in almost perfect condition, found by metal detector in a field near Skipton and brought in only last week.

The coins, all minted in the Tower of London between 1560 and 1565, include four groats (4d pieces), two sixpence pieces and two threepence pieces - a veritable fortune in the time of Elizabeth I.

Because they are in such perfect condition, it is likely they were lost fairly soon after they had been minted. They probably belonged to a well-off Elizabethan gent who lost his purse while on a journey.

"I would think this Blackadder would have been berating his Baldrick for days afterwards," says Simon.

Updated: 10:01 Thursday, August 26, 2004