A local resident of Rebild, northern Denmark, has uncovered Denmark’s largest Viking Age hoard whilst doing some ordinary gardening, North Jutland Museums reports.
The keen green thumb, who wishes to remain anonymous, was recently preparing ground for a new terrace. After striking something whilst digging, the gardener assumed he had hit some old pottery. What he uncovered, however, is both an archaeological and literal treasure: a massive 18.5 kilograms / 41 pounds worth of silver jewelry, coins and bars buried below.
"The biggest surprise of my life"
“It should have just been a few hours of hard gardening work... but it turned out to be the biggest surprise of my life” said the lucky finder. The gardener told the Museum that after about half an hour of digging he hit something that made an unusual sound.
He then started to dig with his hands and was “...able to fish one metal object after another out of the ground. After a short period of careful work, I realized that it was jewelry, coins, and silver bars.”
The gardener had uncovered was a small clay pot containing 320 objects spanning back to the 10th century CE, when Vikings roamed this part of Scandinavia.
The silver bars of the Rebild Hoard. Source: North Jutland Museums
Archaeological joy at this hidden treasure
Torben Sarauw, a cultural heritage manager and archaeologist at North Jutland Museums, spoke of his absolute joy about this new garden-based discovery. This was, Sarauw assured the museum, a find of great importance for our modern understanding of the Viking Age, “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.” For Sarauw, this discovery was akin to “...finding a safe from the Viking Age.”
The composition of the find was unusual, but it hints at the way wealth and money functioned for people in Viking societies throughout the early medieval period. Silver was valued not for its intrinsic value but for its weight and purity.
Silver jewelry, coins or other objects could be melted down, broken apart, or divided into smaller pieces for transactions. Not unlike how somebody today asks for change from a large denomination into several smaller ones.
Speaks to the broader connections of Viking Age Denmark
Amongst the mostly bars of silver, bracelets and coin fragments were 47 complete coins. Two of these were minted in England during the reign of Anglo-Saxon King Edward the Elder (who reigned 899 – 924 C.E. and was the eldest son of Alfred the Great) and several dirhams, coins used throughout the Islamic world during the same period.
The presence of these coins seems to suggest that Rebild had regional and even international cultural and economic connections that extended across the Baltic Sea, throughout Scandinavia, the British Isles, and even as far as the Islamic world.
Whether these coins, along with the rest of the treasure, were acquired peacefully or at the point of a sword, we shall never know.
"Hutu", an engraving on one of the silver bars. Source: North Jutland Museums
Hutu and Harald
Finally, amongst the most intriguing finds contained in the hoard was a silver bar which bears a runic inscription which the museum believes to be “hutu”. Quite what “hutu” means is another mystery, but it could be the name of the owner of the hoard, a person who the treasure was destined for, or the handler whose heavy load was lost, stolen or just simply buried along the route.
This region of Denmark is no stranger to archaeological discoveries from the early medieval period, as this is the third Viking hoard to be discovered here over the course of the past half century.
The find is now being analyzed by the National Museum of Denmark and is now protected cultural property of the Danish state. If declared a ‘National Treasure’, it could provide even more historical context for the rule of Danish king Harald Bluetooth, who ruled during the same era that the Rebild Hoard was believed to have been buried.
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