The hoard found in Rebild – credit, Noth Jutland Museums, released
When a man in Denmark broke ground in his backyard on home improvement work, it was a new terrace that he was looking forward to seeing at the end of the sweaty job.
Yet merely half an hour had passed when he realized there was something else to look forward to—the reward for an enormous quantity of antique silver he had just dug up.
His spade had uncovered nothing less than the largest Viking Age silver hoard ever discovered in Denmark, consisting of bracelets, 47 coins, bars, other jewelry, and an amulet shaped like Thor’s hammer.
At more than 40 pounds, it’s nearly 3-times larger than the now-second largest hoard found in Denmark, and demonstrates the use and value of silver to the Viking Age economy.
”It should have just been a few hours of hard work removing stubborn grass, stone and gravel […] but it became the biggest surprise of my life,” the landowner said in a statement translated from Danish.
”After half an hour of digging, my grip hit something that made a strange sound. First, I thought it was old iron or fence wire as well as some pot cuts, but when I started digging with my hands, I could suddenly fish one metal object after another out of the ground. After a short time of cautious work, it dawned on me that it was jewelry, coins, and silver bars.”
In total, 700 objects were recovered from the man’s property in the Rebild municipality. They point out much of what is already known about the Viking Age economy—that it was powered by silver, as evidenced by the size and scope of the objects, as well as the large quantity of what appeared to be silver weights.
The coin collection, with the amulet of Thor’s hammer seen to the bottom left – credit, Noth Jutland Museums, released
It also tells us of the scale of the trade in silver, with some of the coins carrying Arabic lettering in relief. Lastly, the hoard sits squarely within the accepted Viking Age timeline, with some English coins dating to between 899 and 924, and also within the Christianization of Denmark, a time of political and religious turmoil where burying valuables was common practice.
One curiosity was a silver bar engraved with runes that appear to be a name: “Hutu.” Was it the name of the owner? Perhaps it was a brand of some sort—like Cartier.
A HOARD OF HOARDS:
Another was the comparatively large quantity of silver weights, that, per a statement from the North Jutland Museums which took possession of the hoard for cataloguing and study, correspond very closely with the weight of some of the jewelry items. It perhaps suggests that the weights represented standardized measures which metalworkers would use to cast and form jewelry.
The Museums would like to exhibit the hoard permanently in the Viking Museum Fyrkat.
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