Found a silver treasure from the Viking Age in Stjørdal – NRK Trøndelag
Just before Christmas last year, Pawel Bednarski made the discovery of his life with a metal detector. After a period of bad weather, it got better, and then he went out with the metal detector to a field by the Kongshaug plateau in Stjørdal.
– The first thing I found was a small ring, which at first glance didn’t look particularly interesting. Then another ring appeared. Next I found a piece of a bangle.
That’s what Pawel Bednarski tells the website twin.
Pawel Bednarski is often out with the metal detector looking for treasures. On 21 December last year, he made the discovery of a lifetime in Stjørdal.
Photo: Frid Kvalpskarmo Hansen
Like lying under the hill
Finally, he had dug up a pile of small silver objects. There they were just a few centimeters below the ground.
– The objects were covered in clay, so it was not so easy to see what they looked like. It wasn’t until I got home and dunked one of the bangle pieces in water that I realized this was an exciting find.
Bednarski delivered the objects to the archaeologists in Trøndelag County Municipality. They confirmed that it was interesting and probably from the Viking Age.
– An exceptional find
Then archaeologist Birgit Maixner from the NTNU Science Museum contacted him.
– The find consists of 46 items of silver, and is quite an exceptional find. It weighs 42 grams, and it has been a very long time since such a large discovery from the Viking Age has been made in Norway, she says.
Maixner says that Arab coins were found, but also different types of jewellery.
The silver rings that were found in Stjørdal.
Photo: Birgit Maixner, NTNU Science Museum
Only two of the objects are whole.
– This was a time when chopped and weighed silver was used as a means of payment, says the archaeologist.
– It was a form of economy that was quite new at the time. It came to Scandinavia at the end of the 8th century. Before, you exchanged one product for another product.
The archaeologist states that silver was a flexible means of payment that was easy to handle and transport.
– In addition, you could buy the items you wanted. Just when it has passed for you, she says.
Archaeologist Birgit Maixner believes the silver treasure from Stjørdal is very special. It may have been an unlucky Dane who lost his silver sometime in the 900s.
Photo: Frid Kvalpskarmo Hansen
Special bangle
The archaeologist does not know whether the valuables were hidden to keep them safe, to be a form of boundary marking, or whether they were an offering or given to a god.
– We also don’t know if the person who put the objects down was going to pick them up later, or if it was never intended for this to happen, says Maixner and adds:
– The silver treasure probably had quite a large value in its time. I fall for an individual.
This bangle makes the find special for the researchers.
Photo: Birgit Maixner, NTNU Science Museum
It is a bracelet in particular that arouses attention.
– At that time, the ring was most common in Denmark. But what is so special is that we have eight pieces of the same bangle. Usually silver hoards from the Viking Age contain only one piece from each object.
She imagines that the people who hid the treasure were perhaps from Denmark and had prepared for trade by cutting the silver into suitable pieces.
– But then the trade may never have come to fruition. Perhaps he perceives the trading floor as unsafe and decided to give some of the profit to his by entering before exiting it.
From the 900s
Another unusual feature is the age of the Arab coins that were found.
In an average Norwegian treasure find from the Viking Age, approximately three out of four of the Islamic coins date from 890 to 950 AD.
But in Stjørdal, the coins are dated from the late 7th century or early 8th century.
– The high Islamic age of the large coins, raised band bracelets and large degrees of fragmentation of most of the objects are more typical of treasure finds from Denmark than from Norway. These features also make it likely to assume that the treasure is from the 9th century, says archaeologist Birgit Maixner.