Within its walls are Scotland’s treasures, priceless objects from the distant past that tell the nation’s story and shine a light on the ancient world, from the Lewis Chessmen to Roman relics, Egyptian mummies and Viking hoards.

Now, the historic riches held by the National Museum of Scotland are to be boosted by a new ‘Covid collection’ which curators hope will include supermarket signs warning of toilet roll shortages and posters urging tourists to stay away from beauty spots.

Even if most people living through the Covid-19 crisis may prefer to forget it, the idea is to give future generations the opportunity to see how it has shaped and changed our lives.

Curators from the Edinburgh-based museum have been gathering pieces from across the country which illustrate lockdown, the fight against coronavirus and the vaccination programme since the beginning of the health crisis.

Among the items are some which may be regarded as throwaway and day to day detritus, but which experts say sum up how Scots responded to the pandemic - such as homemade face masks, sanitiser, hopeful ‘rainbow’ paintings and warning posters.

There will also be items which show the role of health, emergency and military professionals throughout the pandemic, and others which demonstrate the economic impact, community response and emotional toll Covid-19 has had on patients and their families. Once gathered, the ‘Covid collection’ will become permanently held within the national museum archives alongside other treasured artefacts from Scotland’s history, to be used for exhibitions and displays far in the future.

According to Sophie Goggins, a biomedical science curator at the museum involved in collecting Covid-related items, lessons have been learned from the 2014 Ebola outbreak, when efforts to gather items such as airport posters advising travellers of the risks were disposed of before they could be added to the museum’s contemporary collection.

She said the museum is now in a race against time to gather pandemic-related items before they too are lost.

“The challenge with contemporary collecting is trying to save things and moving quickly. Some of the early objects from the pandemic are fairly disposable,” she said.

“At the time of Ebola, we struggled to get signs at airports, they were not seen as material that was important or should be kept.

“One thing that we might have already missed out on because of how fast things moved, were signs at supermarkets limiting the amount of toilet rolls that people could buy.

“It’s one thing that people remember, and we would have liked one of those.”

The collection is being split into six categories: public health, hospitals and treatment; politics; economy; tourism; education and everyday life.

Among the first objects to be collected was a face shield made by a teacher at Lochaber High School using a 3D printer and finished with plastic panels which was delivered to the local Belford hospital by Lochaber Mountain Rescue Team. The item is said to illustrate the impact of the pandemic on the NHS, PPE shortages, the community response and school closures.

Other items include Hidden Disabilities’ sunflower lanyards and facemask exemption cards, and handknitted hearts which were distributed among Covid-19 patients and their loved ones at Glasgow intensive care units to help create a link between them at a time when hospital visiting was not allowed.

One heart would be placed in the palm of an intensive care patient and the other given to a relative, to help forge an invisible and personal bond.

There are also hopes to include specialised medical and research equipment related to helping to treat coronavirus patients, oral and documentary evidence from frontline workers, and items from the temporary emergency critical care hospital, NHS Louisa Jordan.

The role of the army in helping with its installation and the cooperation with civilian agencies is also said to be of interest within the context of the museum’s military collections.

At the other end of the spectrum, the curators are gathering symbols of happiness and hope that helped raise spirits during the darkest days – including a painted pebbled from a Shetland beach.

According to Sarah Laurenson, the museum’s Modern and Contemporary History curator, the pebble is particularly symbolic: “It is talking about the experience of children during the pandemic,” she said. “Experiences of lockdown are different across different parts of the country. This is from a family that were on the coast and collecting beach pebbles to paint – the opposite to people in cities that don’t have much space.”

She added: “We are being very selective, there is so much that we could collect - covid has shaped the world around us in many ways that we don’t think about.

“Such as people who gave birth during the pandemic, who kept the masks they were wearing during that time to go alongside the baby’s mementos like name bracelets from hospital. That’s such a defining symbol of their experience, and these throwaway things have been kept.”

The collection will reflect Scotland as a whole, in the hope of showing future generations how different areas of the country responded to the crisis.

“We want to show how lockdown has been experienced in different parts of the country, and how that experience varies because of culture and geological factors” added Sarah.

“One thing we would like have are the signs that appeared on the outside of villages in summer which rely heavily on the tourism industry, asking visitors to respect that the community was self-isolated and they were closed.

“We saw that in relation to first lockdown as a way to quarantine in rural area. Signs were put up by individuals, and there is a spectrum of different languages and dialects - some played with the Gaelic language.

“We would love one of these signs they are still in use, but there’s a waiting game with some of this material.”

The National Museum of Scotland is one of many around the world which has announced it is collecting coronavirus-related items to help explain the pandemic to people in years to come.

Last week The Smithsonian National Museum of American History said it had acquired the vial that contained the first dose of Covid-19 vaccine administered in the United States as part of its plans to document the global pandemic and “this extraordinary period we were going through.”

Meanwhile, Glasgow Museums, including the Riverside transport museum, has also said it is collecting pandemic items with a view to future exhibitions.

Among the objects being gathered are examples of children’s lockdown schoolwork, posters relating to cancelled events and artworks which depict key workers.

Sarah added: “We sometimes have a job telling people that we collect things from the present as well as the past - they think a museum is related to historic objects.

“But everyone we have approached has realised these things have value, even when it’s not a terribly obvious object, people instantly understand why it’s of historic value.”