Viking update: And we’re not talking training camp

by Thor on Jul. 23rd, 2007
in Scientific Inquiry

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Hitting the jackpot: Two treasure hunters with a metal detector recently uncovered this silver Viking bowl and a treasure trove of other artifacts in a farm field in England. Early estimates peg the find at worth more than $1 million.I make no apologies for taking every chance I can get to put Viking information on this blog.

Last week the British Museum announced the find of a huge horde of Viking artifacts a father-son team of treasure hunters. It’s believed to be the largest Viking find in the past 150 years.

The duo made the discovery going through a farm field in northern England back in January. Basically, their metal detector when berserk when it sensed the cache of coins and jewelry that was amassed more than 1,000 years ago in lands spanning from Ireland to Russia.

Starting to dig, the first thing they found was a silver bowl. Inside the bowl were a lot of other goodies, with some spilled out around the area. The entire find was slightly more than a foot underground.

When all was said and done, they’d found more than 600 coins, dozens of jewelry pieces, silver ingots and fragments of silver. Among the coins, there was a mix of Nordic and pagan images, showing a religious transition taking place in the Viking culture at that time.

Once all the pieces are studied, the British Museum hopes to make an offer to the treasure hunters to purchase some of the pieces. Preliminary press reports estimate that the find might be worth more than $1 million. In the meantime, they’re going out to keep digging, something they’ve been doing for years without nearly the historical success

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