Posted on 04/29/2023 9:05:04 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
Nearly 300 silver coins believed to be more than 1,000 years old have been discovered near a Viking fortress site in north-west Denmark, a museum has said.
The trove – lying in two spots not far apart – was unearthed by a girl who was metal-detecting in a cornfield last autumn.
"A hoard like this is very rare," Lars Christian Norbach, the director of the North Jutland Museum, where the artefacts will go on display, told Agence France-Presse.
The silver coins were found about 5 miles (8km) from the Fyrkat Viking ringfort, near the town of Hobro. From their inscriptions, they are believed to date back to the 980s.
The trove includes Danish, Arab and Germanic coins as well as pieces of jewellery originating from Scotland or Ireland, according to archaeologists. Norbach said the finds were from the same period as the fort, built by King Harald Bluetooth, and would offer a greater insight into the history of the Vikings.
There could be a link between the treasure – which the Vikings would bury during wars – and the fort, which burned down during the same period, he said.
Archaeologists have said they will continue digging next autumn after the harvest. They hope to find the burial sites and homes of the troves’ one-time owners.
The Vikings believed that burying their treasure allowed them to find it again after death.
The artefacts will go on public display from July at the Aalborg Historical Museum. The girl who made the discovery will receive financial compensation, the amount of which has not been made public.
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
Shit if you are lucky enough to find something like that you would be best off keeping it a complete secret from every other person in the world.
The Detectorists is a really funny British series. Sort of a British Napoleon Dynomite.
I may give it another try. A few years back I found a streaming source for the episodes.
https://freerepublic.com/focus/chat/4145777/posts?page=5#5
Same here. My wife still points to an old, runned-down house in the country and says I should search there. I tell her, “they ain’t got no money and if they happened to lose any, they would search until they found their penny.”
I don’t know how it works in Denmark, but in England the government has the option to buy it (mostly if it is unique or museum quality) and they have to pay the finder the full amount that it is worth. This is to promote detectoring in order to find historical stuff.
The person that finds it usually has a deal made with the landowner ahead of time for some percentage of anything that they find. I forget what the typical rate is, but I think it is more in the 20% range, but perhaps 50/50 in some cases?
A viking Scrooge McDuck?
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