Can you imagine a day of toiling away in the garden turning into a once-in-a-lifetime find? A homeowner in the Rebild municipality of Denmark says that’s what happened to them when they were digging around in their backyard while building a terrace. But instead of just uncovering a lot of roots and rubble, the anonymous homeowner discovered ancient treasure… literally!
Live Science reports that the person found the remnants of a massive Viking hoard weighing over 40 pounds, which is estimated to be more than one thousand years old. The silver stash is now the largest collection Denmark has ever found from the Viking Age.
Despite being buried underground all these years, the collection seems to be in largely good shape, and experts at the North Jutland Museums (Nordjyske Museer) have been going through the 700 pieces of silver to identify and date them.
On Instagram, the museum gushed over the find and explained how meaningful it was for researchers, who will be able to use it to better understand what the Viking Age was like in Denmark.
The Find Included a Lot of Money
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According to Live Science, the anonymous homeowner’s discovery included items like silver bars, coins, jewelry, and a miniature version of Thor’s hammer.
“This is a find of great importance for our understanding of the Viking Age in Denmark,” Torben Sarauw, head of cultural heritage at Nordjyske Museer, said in the Instagram post. “Not just because of its size, but also because the treasure so clearly shows how silver functioned as wealth and a means of payment in the Viking Age. It’s like finding a safe from the Viking Age.”
It’s worth noting that there was a mix of different types of coins in the haul. Live Science reports that there were Anglo-Saxon silver pennies as well as Islamic coins.
“When we analyze the weight of the silver objects, the treasure reveals information about the economic practices of the Viking Age,” Sarauw continued. “The treasure does not only consist of beautiful objects. Most of them are part of a structured value system by weight.”
Vikings Were Scandinavian Explorers
If you don’t already know much about Vikings, this find may not exactly sound that remarkable. However, the Visit Denmark website says that the Viking Age was a long-lived one that had lasting impacts on the medieval history of much of the region, including Ireland, Great Britain, and many other places in Europe.
Finding a collection of treasure this large and this varied will hopefully help experts learn more about the group and what influence they had on the places where they lived and traveled.