“Unveiling the Lost Legacy: How a 9th-Century Anglo-Saxon Cross Was Brought Back from the Brink”
National Museums ScotlandOne of the four arms of the cross, bearing remarkable detail.
“Initially I didn’t understand what I had found,” McLennan told the BBC. “Then I turned it over and wiped my thumb across it and I saw the Saltire-type of design and I knew instantly it was Viking. I went into shock, endorphins flooded my system and away I went stumbling towards my colleagues waving it in the air.”
According to The Smithsonian, the ninth-century cross was made in Northumbria — what is now northern England and southern Scotland — and features evangelist symbols as well as gold and black inlays. It was also found with a delicate metal cord wrapped around it.
After careful cleaning, the dirt-encrusted cross yielded engravings of one of the four Gospel writers of the New Testament on each arm: Matthew as a human, Mark as a lion, Luke as a calf, and John as an eagle.
National Museums ScotlandThe 1,000-year-old cross during its restoration.
The four Gospel writers, three of which were represented as animals, were decorated in black niello (or metallic alloy) and gold leaf. Remarkably, not a single soul had seen this cross since the ninth century. Experts believe it was purposefully buried with the rest of the relics and was once worn by a cleric or king.
Indeed, Dr. Martin Goldberg, Principal Curator of the Early Medieval and Viking collections, is fairly convinced that whoever owned this particular piece was a high-ranking member of society.
“You could almost imagine someone taking it off their neck and wrapping the chain around it to bury it in the ground,” he said. “It has that kind of personal touch. We imagine that a lot of ecclesiastical treasures were robbed from monasteries… This is one of the [survivors].”
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