Gem of a find for Eilith on Muckle Roe walk

A walk on the beach at Muckle Roe produced a rare find for seven-year-old Eilith Gunn – a piece of prehistoric stone jewellery more than 2,000 years old.

Eilith came across the stone bead at the bottom of a burn while out with her father Dugald on the shores of Scarvataing.

The eagle-eyed youngster was delighted to find the stone and they and decided to take the find back home.

“It fitted her finger just like a ring, it was just the right size,” Dugald said. He spoke to his own father “who is quite into archaeology” and his father thought it was a spindle whorl.

But experts at Shetland Museum and Archives have

said it is instead a rare piece dating to back to the Iron or Stone Age.

Curator Ian Tait said: “In Shetland in ancient times, jewellery was not made from precious metal, it was made from local resources, and in the main stone.”

Soft rock called soapstone was the most common type of rock for beads, pendants and rings, he said. “It might be evidence of a hitherto unknown site.”

Dr Tait said the stone could be as old as 5,000 years.

Dugald, Eilith and her youngster sister Vaila, three, went to the museum last week to donate the piece of history.

“I was really surprised. I didn’t expect it to be that old,” Dugald added.