Like all treasure hunters, when Derek McLennan's metal detector went off in the middle of a field in Scotland, he was hoping to find something worth digging up and taking home. But he had no idea he had just stumbled upon the find of a lifetime worthy of a museum. 

McLennan, a 47-year-old retired businessman was granted permission to search the area, but almost didn't go out that day, reports The Guardian. "I dragged myself out of my sickbed because I had two friends who wanted to detect and I'm a bit of an obsessive."

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He added, "Initially I didn't understand what I had found because I thought it was a silver spoon and then I turned it over and wiped my thumb across it and I saw the saltire-type of design and knew instantly it was Viking. Then my senses exploded." 

Experts from across Britain have been left flabbergasted by the find, calling it the "largest and most important Viking treasure found in Scotland since 1891." McLennan's discovery of over 100 items made of gold, silver and enamel was found some two feet below the surface near the market town of Dumfries near the Irish Sea coast.

Archaeologists date the treasure at around the 9th or 10th centuries, when the island of Britain was still a patchwork of independent kingdoms and Viking possessions. After formal archaeologists were called in to the site, more items were unearthed and packed away in a small silver urn experts theorize came from the Carolingian Empire.

Wrapped up in cloth, the lidded urn and its contents will only be examined after they have been X-rayed so archaeologists can determine how to open it safely.

But the finds that have already been excavated have gotten the scientific world buzzing. Along with silver ingots, armbands, brooches, and gold rings, McLennan recovered a dazzling solid silver cross, whose four arms are decorated with enameled figures, images, he postulates are Sts. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. 

"I believe they resemble the carvings you can see on the remnants of St. Cuthbert's coffin in Durham cathedral," he told reports from The Scotsman.

"For me, the cross opens up the possibility of an intriguing connection with Lindisfarne and Iona." 

Lindisfarne, famous for its illustrated gospels, was a rich priory off the north English coast whose fall to a Viking raid in 793 is often though of as the beginning of the Viking Age in Britain. Iona, a small island off western Scotland, was a famed center of Gaelic monasticism that also saw its prominence recede before Viking attacks. 

Archaeologists are also amazed at the internationality of the discovery. In addition to the Carolingian cup, Scandinavian beads and pins were also found. The urn, one of only three ever found on Britain, is suspected to have been a century old when it was buried.

In an interview with The Scotsman, Fiona Hyslop, the Scottish government's Cabinet Secretary for Culture and External Affairs, said, "It's clear these artifacts are of great value in themselves, but their greatest value will be in what they can contribute to our understanding of life in early medieval Scotland, and what they tell us about the interaction between the different peoples in these islands at that time." 

Often changing hands between kingdoms and empires, Britain is littered with such hoards. Worried their treasures would be carried off in a raid, people resorted to burying valuable items in secret locations for safekeeping until the danger had passed. The Staffordshire Hoard, a seventh century Anglo-Saxon trove discovered in 2009, was unlike anything ever found in Europe, and consisted of 3,500 items made of gold, silver and garnet.

Tagsviking, hoard, Dumfries, Scotland, Treasure