http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2009/aug/27/viking-treasure-bought-for-nation 
A Viking silver cup
A silver cup, worth around 200,000 pounds and one of a number of newly conserved objects from a major Viking treasure hoard, going on display at The British Museum, London and the Yorkshire Museum, York. Photograph: Katie Collins/PA Wire
'Stunning' Viking find bought for the nation
Vale of York hoard seen as most important discovery of its kind since 1840
* Mark Brown, arts correspondent
* guardian.co.uk, Thursday 27 August 2009 20.04 BST
A thousand-year-old chalice full of silver coins and jewellery and described as the most important Viking find for 170 years has been bought for the nation.
Words such as "astonishing" and "stunning" were used over and again at an event to mark the news at the British Museum today. They would probably be shared by the men who found it in a remote field near Harrogate – father and son metal detector enthusiasts David and Andrew Whelan, who now, along with the field's owner, share the £1,082,000 that the find was valued at.
The Vale of York hoard, as it is now known, will be jointly owned by the York Museums Trust and the British Museum in London, which described the find as being of global importance. The institution's curator of medieval coinage, Gareth Williams, recalled the huge and growing excitement after the hoard came to the museum in 2007. "It was clear as soon as the vessel came in that we had something very important. Once we got the x-rays we could see it was packed with silver. Even then, I don't think we anticipated how much."
The hoard turned out to be a gilt silver chalice – probably looted or given in terrified tribute by a church or monastery in what is now France. The contents of the chalice amount to a rich Viking man's life savings, including 617 coins, some from as far away as northern Russia and Afghanistan, and the type of jewellery given by Viking kings as rewards to their warriors, including a rare arm ring. Who owned the treasure is probably unanswerable, but he was clearly rich. Museum experts believe the Viking probably buried it to keep it safe with the intention of going back for it. The hoard was buried in approximately AD927 during what is a key transitional period in English history. Around that time the Anglo-Saxon King Athelstan – son of Alfred the Great – managed to conquer Viking Northumbria and then, wrongly, began calling himself king of Britain.
The Vikings were not going to take this lying down and Williams believes the hoard's owner may have been a follower of the Viking leader Guthfrith, who attempted and failed to defeat Athelstan. "It certainly seems likely that it was buried with the intention of him coming back for it and for whatever reason he did not," said Williams. The exact location of the find is not being revealed but it is isolated and remote. "The hoard seems to have been buried in the middle of nowhere but presumably there was some sort of landmark there, a tree or a big rock to tell him where it was," said Williams. "Maybe there wasn't. Maybe that's why he never recovered it."
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In a statement released on behalf of the Whelans, the father and son said they had always dreamed of finding a hoard. "The contents of the hoard we found went far beyond our wildest dreams and hopefully people will love seeing the objects on display in York and London for many, many years to come."
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It also showed different sides of a people who often got a bad press. "We use Viking as a shorthand term and there's the traditional raping and pillaging image of the Vikings. That was replaced in the 1970s by what I think of as the fluffy bunny school of Viking studies which said, actually, they're all peaceful traders and farmers. The truth is they are both."
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