The board in its entirety consists of 28 silver and silver-gilt objects, dating to the second half of the eighth century. There are twelve silver penannular brooches, eight silver bowls (one of which is a hanging bowl, one of only two known silver examples), one silver communion spoon, one silver knife, two silver chapes, one silver pommel, and three silver cones. The brooches are of Pictish design while the scabbard chapels and sword pommel appear to be Anglo-Saxon in origin with one of the chapes having a prayer in old English. The hoard was discovered on 4 July 1958 by a schoolboy, Douglas Coutts, during an excavation of a medieval chapel on St Ninian's Isle. Coutts found the treasure in a wooden box, which had been buried under a cross-marked slab.
Here’s a video that goes into more detail about the hoard: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Fqw7cwYbWzo
by Lettered_Olive
1 Comment
Since this is a repost of something last seen a month ago, I’m going to copy-paste my comment on that last time here again.
I am **highly** sceptical of these being sword scabbard chapes.
when I was fortunate enough to be granted access to both chapes for study at the Scottish National Museum a few years ago, I took detailed measurements of the gap in the centre of both chapes.
The cross-section of the slot in the chapes is WAY too thin for a scabbard – about 2.3mm average width on the one pictured in this photograph. The other one has a larger gap, though it is quite irregular, and varies from about 5.0mm on the right side, down to 2.3mm on the left-hand side.
a scabbard of the same date, using the Cronk Moar scabbards as typical example of a hiberno-norse scabbard of roughly the same period, comprises of 2 wooden laths, (oak, in the case of Cronk Moar, Limewood in most cases) each of about 1.2mm thick, overlaid by a linen binding of about 0.5mm thick, and then leather, of about 1-1.2mm thick at an absolute minimum.
In other words, the absolute minimum for a scabbard is 2x 1.2mm, 2x 0.5mm, 2x 1.2mm, or about 5.8mm thick. In reality, in my experience as a craftsman making such items, they are usually thicker than that; Most of a scabbard will also have a hair-on hide lining – possibly lambskin, sealskin, or possibly calfskin. each of those linings is about 1.5mm thick. and of course, you also have the blade itself, which is at least 2mm thick at the tip – so a scabbard where the blade seats down to will have an additional 5mm of material as well.
It should be pretty obvious that 5.8mm will not fit into a 2.3mm slot, let alone 10mm+
I am of the opinion that Professor Andrew C. O’dell’s assessment in the original 1960 University of Aberdeen publication of the hoard is correct, that they are not sword-chapes, but Stole chapes – the weighted ends of an ecclesiastical stole, worn by a priest as part of the vestments. This is supported by the fact that the pictured example of the two stoles is inscribed with “I nomine d(ei) s(ummi)” (“In the name of god the highest”)
An ecclesiastical stole is constructed of several layers of fabric, most likely imported silks, and a linen core or lining. It would be most likely that the chapes were attached by threading a thick leather thong through a pocket on the end of the stole, which would then capture the chape and hold it in place, but enable them to be easily removed when required.