Scotland Day 7

American tourist move of the day: “OK, we’ll meet back at the gift shop at [time].” [Time arrives]: “Uh… we didn’t say WHICH gift shop, did we…”

What is it about major Scottish tourist attractions and multiple gift shops? A castle, of course, has challenges if you want to use existing structure, but why on earth does the National Museum need four? OK, one of those was dedicated to a special exhibit on the Vikings. Fine. Why does it need three for day-to-day operations?

OK, that was my gripe about the National Museum. Now I’m going to rave.

Many museums (not enough, IMO, but many) have coins on display. Rarely they will be displayed in such a way that one can look at both the obverse and reverse. To date, however, I’d always seen coins displayed as individual items, usually far removed in time or place from other coins on display. This is very frustrating to collectors and moneyers, as we want to know what sorts of features of coins from a specific place and time were common or uncommon, not just whether they were present on one coin (useful as that admittedly is). It also gives a sense of coins being isolated artifacts, not common items of day-to-day use.

The Scottish National Museum has a horde of Roman coins on display. In a big pile. A big, gorgeous pile of silver, mostly in good shape. I wanted to run my fingers through it. I wanted to count and catalog it. I was more tempted than ever in my life to hire Remington Steel or Neal Caffrey to steal it. Shiny… hang on, need to wipe the drool off. That’s better. So. The Romans gave a bribe to a Scottish clan chief, who put it in a savings account (a clay pot in a hole in the ground). For some reason it remained there for centuries. I estimate on the order of 1,000 coins, more likely a lot more than that. There are clearly multiple mintings present, and varied levels of wear, though from what I could see all the coins were Roman denarii. This is fascinating on several levels. One, it gives a sense for how currency was regarded. The Romans could have provided an equal value of gold coins in a much smaller package, but didn’t. Nor was this a single minting or part of one that was delivered from the mint for this purpose – clearly it was assembled near to its destination from what was available. The scale is also interesting; we know a little about how Roman pay levels were, so we can say with some confidence what modern equivalents would be. Imaging bribing someone with stacks of $20 bills – not brand new notes in Federal Reserve wrappers, but an assortment of bills in varying states of wear with a couple of different bank wrappers. It gives a shape and context to the bribe – not some huge ceremonial event. More like a regular payment to a local warlord.

Almost as an aside, they also have a much smaller horde of Norse coins. This includes some trade silver coins from the Mideast (distinct Arabic writing) mixed with local mintings (runes and faces). I’d probably gush about this if I hadn’t still been recovering from the awe of the Roman horde when I saw this one. FYI, the Norse horde was a regular exhibit, not part of the special Viking exhibit. This is still an impressive and telling piece of history, mind you, it just lacks the scale and personal interest to me of the Roman horde.

The temporary Viking exhibit was a nice one. They took some pains to emphasize the regular elements of daily life in the various Norse countries and to educate people of all interest and knowledge levels. Thank to the SCA (I’ve often said that at night in An Tir everyone has a Norse persona) I know quite a bit about the Northmen, but I still learned more. They also, of course, thoroughly dismissed the myth of the horned helmets… but had them in the gift shop anyway for children. Oh well.

I could easily have spent multiple days in the museum with great pleasure. I could have spent a day or two just in the Roman section, for that matter! I barely scratched the surface of the bulk of the museum, but if the rest of their exhibits and artifacts are up to the standards of what I saw I would say this is a must-see for ANYONE visiting Scotland.

Whether you like Roman coins or not. I did mention those, right?