A fisherman recently hooked the catch of a lifetime when he reeled in a 700-year-old medieval sword.
The man was fishing on the Vistula River in Poland when he made the find, according to a translated Facebook post from the Capital Conservator of Monuments in Warsaw on July 2.
The full length of the sword was almost entirely preserved, including a “characteristic ball head and an intriguing cross sign on the wedge,” per the statement.
The fisherman brought the artifact to the Capital Conservator of Monuments, which the office stated is required by law in Poland. They added that they, in turn, “immediately donated the sword” to the Metal Conservation Workshop at the State Archeological Museum, where “experts will take care of it professionally.”
Sword found by fisherman in Poland.
Stołeczny Konserwator Zabytków/Facebook
The State Archeological Museum called the sword “a sensational find” in a translated Facebook post shared on July 7.
Symbol on sword found in Poland.
Stołeczny Konserwator Zabytków/Facebook
The museum said the sword has an “intensive conservation process” ahead of it, including radiation-based imaging, a six-week “bath” in a special solution that removes harmful chloride, a rigorous rinsing for pH balancing, and a “mechanical cleaning of sand [and] soil.”
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The sword will then be sealed with a protective coating — and only then will it be handed over to the museum’s team of archaeologists for further study.
Sword found by fisherman in Poland.
Stołeczny Konserwator Zabytków/Facebook
“The sword is dated to the 13th or 14th century, which is the time when Warsaw was founded,” Anna Magdalena Łań, a chief specialist with the city of Warsaw, told Fox News Digital in an email translated from Polish.
“A more precise date may be determined thanks to the cross mark, which is the ‘signature’ of the blacksmith who made it,” she continued.
She said the sword spans 31 inches from tip to hilt, and is “quite light because [of a] very large extent of corrosion.”
Łań also said that piecing together the mysteries behind the sword will likely be especially challenging for researchers due to the fact that it was found in water.
“The sword was found in a river, meaning it was discovered without context — that is, without other artifacts that could tell us more about it,” she told the outlet.
This isn’t the first exciting archeological find in Poland in recent months. Archeologists discovered the skeleton of what they believe was likely a medieval knight under a former ice cream shop in Gdańsk, a city in the northern part of the country, on July 8.
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The knight measured about 5 feet, 6 inches tall, and was likely about 40 years old at the time of his death, per a translated report shared on the city’s website.
The city said researchers believe the man was a knight due to a hand-carved limestone tombstone over his grave, which depicted a knight holding a shield.