Unique silver artefacts dating back more than 1,000 years have been found in a cave in Co Kilkenny and are being restored by the National Museum.
In all, 16 items were found with a hoard of silver coins in Dunmore Cave late last year but for security purposes, details of the find were not released until yesterday.
According to Mr Andrew Hal pin, assistant keeper of antiquities at the museum, the items found with the coins are unique in the Viking world. "While the eight coins were Anglo-Saxon in origin, eight other items, which may be silver buttons or part of a cloak, are now being examined," he said.
He said the conical items, made of silver wire in a way which no one had been able to establish, were causing great excitement among academics studying the Viking era. "We have checked all the research and we have found nothing like these objects, but we believe they may have been some kind of fasteners for a cloak." He said the coins and some ingots of silver dated to 940-970 and may have formed part of someone's personal wealth. "We believe the other items came off the material in which the coins were found but unfortunately, we were not able to establish this because only a fragment of that fabric was found.
"We are sending the artefacts and coins to be cleaned and we may get a better idea then how these delicate pieces were made and what they were made for," he said.
Mr Victor Buckley, an archaeologist with the Office of Public Works, said the finds were an important part of the Viking jigsaw. He said they were found by an OPW guide who was cleaning the cave at the end of the tourist season.
He found the articles in a crack in the side of the cave and picked them up because he thought it was a crisps bag.
He said the Viking presence at that site had been well established. The Annals of the Four Masters had recorded a massacre of 1,000 people in the cave in 928 by the Vikings about 40 years before the dates on the coins.
The hoard was inspected yesterday by the Minister for Arts, Heritage, Gaeltacht and the Islands, Ms de Valera, before being sent for restoration.