The St Ninian's Isle Treasure

In July 1958 a 15-year-old Lerwick schoolboy named Douglas Coutts, working as a volunteer on an archaeological dig inside a ruined chapel on St Ninian's Isle, lifted a flat stone and uncovered a wooden box. Inside were 28 pieces of 8th-century Pictish silver: bowls, brooches, sword chapes, a single jawbone of a porpoise. The hoard had been hidden, probably under threat of a Viking raid, twelve centuries earlier. The originals went to the National Museum of Scotland; high-quality replicas are on permanent display at the Shetland Museum in Lerwick.