A man bought a metal detector to get off the couch. He just made the "gold find of the century" in Norway.
A man bought a metal detector to get off the couch. He just made the "gold find of the century" in Norway.
The gold pendants — flat, thin, single-sided gold medals called bracteates — date from around A.D. 500, experts say.
At first, the Norwegian man thought his metal detector reacted to chocolate money buried in the soil. It turned out to be nine pendants, three rings and 10 gold pearls in what was described as the country's gold find of the century.
The rare find was made this summer by 51-year-old Erlend Bore on the southern island of Rennesoey, near the city of Stavanger. Bore had bought his first metal detector earlier this year to have a hobby after his doctor ordered him to get out instead of sitting on the couch.
"At first I thought it was chocolate coins or Captain Sabertooth coins," said Bore, referring to a fictional Norwegian pirate. "It was totally unreal."
Time to go buy a better couch I guess.
He didn't get a single cent from finding those coins. Items that old are considered government property and anyone who finds them is required by law to hand them in for free.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Ole Madsen, director at the Archaeological Museum at the University of Stavanger, said that to find "so much gold at the same time is extremely unusual."
The museum posted video of the treasure on Facebook and other images on social media, writing: "It will be preserved and displayed as soon as possible in our upcoming exhibition."
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.
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.
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.
"Given the location of the discovery and what we know from other similar finds, this is probably a matter of either hidden valuables or an offering to the gods during dramatic times," professor Hakon Reiersen said.
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I will buy one now and abandon my family and home and belongings to walk ethereally in the coasts
Slightly off topic but there's a rather charming UK comedy series about this hobby, it's called Detectorists.