By Dean Murray
A homeowner digging in their garden has discovered Denmark’s largest Viking silver hoard.
Around 700 objects were unearthed while working on a new terrace in the Rebild area, including bracelets, silver bars and a small Thor’s hammer.
Around 320 of the finds, with a total weight of 6.4 kilograms, were still in the original clay vessel, while the rest were found in the soil around the site.
The treasure, thought to have been placed in the vessel sometime in the 10th century, also included 47 whole coins and fragments and various cut silver objects.
The hoard is almost three times larger than the largest silver hoard from the Viking Age in Denmark to date, the so-called Terslevskat of approximately 6.5 kilos unearthed in 1911.
(Nordjyske Museer via SWNS)
The finder of the silver treasure, who wishes to remain anonymous, said: “It should have just been a few hours of hard gardening work removing stubborn grass, stones and gravel for a new tiled terrace, but it turned out to be the biggest surprise of my life.
“After half an hour of digging, my grip hit something that made a strange sound. At first I thought it was old iron or fence wire and some potsherds, but when I started digging with my hands, I was suddenly 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.”
Torben Sarauw, cultural heritage manager and archaeologist at Nordjyske Museer, said: “This is a find of great importance for our understanding of the Viking Age in Denmark. 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.”
Nordjyske Museer said the treasure also contains a puzzling clue: one of the silver bars has runes engraved on it. The inscription can possibly be read as “hutu”, and it can be interpreted as a name, an ownership mark, or some other form of significant marking.
(Nordjyske Museer via SWNS)
Nordjyske Museer explain that silver bars, jewelry and scrap silver were used as a means of payment and a store of value, where the weight of the silver was decisive. It was therefore often cut into smaller pieces, divided or melted down.
They said: “The unusually large number of silver bars in the hoard are grouped around specific weight groups, and the same applies to parts of the bracelets and scrap silver. This suggests that the silver was not just randomly put together, but was organized as a significant stock of values.”
The treasure contains both Arab and Anglo-Saxon coins, and according to Torben Sarauw, this testifies to how closely connected Denmark was with large parts of Europe and areas far to the east during the Viking Age.
He said: “That’s what’s fascinating about the find. The silver was hidden in Rebild, but it points to a much larger world. The coins reveal that there were connections to the Islamic world in the east and England to the west, as well as a Viking Age where people, goods and values moved over enormous distances.”
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