COPENHAGEN, Denmark — At first, the Norwegian guy idea his steel detector reacted to chocolate cash buried in the soil. It became out to be 9 pendants, 3 rings and 10 gold pearls in what used to be described as the nation’s gold find of the century.
The uncommon find used to be made this summer season by means of 51-year-old Erlend Bore on the southern island of Rennesoey, close to the town of Stavanger. Bore had purchased his first steel detector previous this 12 months to have a interest after his physician ordered him to get out as an alternative of sitting on the sofa.
Ole Madsen, director at the Archaeological Museum at the University of Stavanger, stated that to find “so much gold at the same time is extremely unusual.”
“This is the gold find of the century in Norway,” Madsen stated.
In August, Bore started strolling round the mountainous island along with his steel detector. A remark issued by means of the college stated he first discovered some scrap, however later exposed one thing that used to be “completely unreal” — the treasure weighing a little more than 100 grams (3.5 oz).
Under Norwegian law, objects from before 1537, and coins older than 1650, are considered state property and must be handed in.
Associate professor Håkon Reiersen with the museum said the gold pendants — flat, thin, single-sided gold medals called bracteates — date from around A.D. 500, the so-called Migration Period in Norway, which runs between 400 and about 550, when there were widespread migrations in Europe.
The pendants and gold pearls were part of “a very showy necklace” that had been made by skilled jewelers and was worn by society’s most powerful, said Reiersen. He added that “in Norway, no similar discovery has been made since the 19th century, and it is also a very unusual discovery in a Scandinavian context.”
An expert on such pendants, professor Sigmund Oehrl with the same museum, said that about 1,000 golden bracteates have so far been found in Norway, Sweden and Denmark.
He said symbols on the pendants usually show the Norse god Odin healing the sick horse of his son. On the Rennesoey ones, the horse’s tongue hangs out on the gold pendants, and “its slumped posture and twisted legs show that it is injured,” Oehrl said.
“The horse symbol represented illness and distress, but at the same time hope for healing and new life,” he added.
The plan is to show off the find at the Archaeological Museum in Stavanger, about 300 kilometers (200 miles) southwest of Oslo.
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