Two hobbyists with metal detectors stumbled onto something professionals had never spotted: Norway’s biggest known stash of Viking Age coins. The pair first turned up 19 silver coins in a field near the village of Rena on April 10, prompting archaeologists to move in, CBS News reports. More than 3,150 coins have since been recovered, with the search still underway, officials in Innlandet County said. “The detectors never stopped beeping!” said county archaeologist May-Tove Smiseth, per Live Science.
Experts at the University of Oslo’s Museum of Cultural History said most of the silver pieces came from England and Germany, others from Denmark and Norway, and were likely buried between the late 900s and early 1000s. The coins span the reigns of Cnut the Great and Ethelred II of England, Otto III of Rome, and Norway’s Harald Hardrada, illuminating a moment when foreign currency dominated Norway’s economy. Norway’s climate and environment minister called it a “historic find,” per CBS, while Smiseth described witnessing the discovery as the kind of event “one might experience only once in a career.”