Clash of cultures: exhibition tells story of when Vikings ruled the north of England

An iron and bronze helmet, beautifully decorated with tiny animals, that was ‘undoubtedly a prized possession and a great status symbol for the owner’. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian

When Anglo-Saxons buried their jewellery in an attempt to keep it safe from marauding Vikings, it is unlikely they envisaged their treasures would be dug up a millennium later and studied by their descendants.

Nor would they have expected the items to sit alongside everyday objects owned by their Scandinavian oppressors as part of the largest exhibition of Viking-age artefacts in the UK, aiming to tell the story for the first time of the invaders’ power base in the north of England.