What started with 19 silver coins has turned into the biggest Viking Age coin hoard ever found in Norway.
Rune Sætre and Vegard Sørlie found the first coins on April 10 in a field in Østerdalen in east-central Norway, a site that had not previously been tried by metal detectorists. They followed municipal protocol and called in archaeologists from Innlandet county, then worked the site together.
The hoard kept growing over the following days. Within weeks, the total had passed 2,000 coins. It now stands at 3,250 silver coins, and archaeologists are still searching the field.
The previous Norwegian record was a hoard of more than 1,800 coins found on the country’s south-western coast in the mid-1800s.
The coins date from the 980s to the 1040s, covering a period before Harald Hardråde established a national mint in Norway. Most are foreign coins, including ones minted under Æthelred the Unready, King Cnut and Otto III, the Holy Roman Emperor.
Coins bearing Harald Hardråde’s mark were minted after he returned from Byzantium in 1045, where he had commanded the Varangian Guard.
The hoard has been transferred to the Museum of Cultural History in Oslo, where experts are examining the English, German and Norwegian coins.
“The hoard is an absolutely spectacular discovery from the Viking Age in Norway,” Svein Gullbekk, an archaeologist from the University of Oslo who is reviewing the coins, said over email.
“The last time we had a discovery of a large hoard coin like this was in Trondheim in 1950, but that was more than 900 silver coins.”
Archaeologists believe the coins may originally have been buried in a leather pouch or another organic material that later decayed, leaving them spread across the field, possibly by ploughing over centuries.
Researchers think the hoard may be linked to iron production in the region. From the 900s to the late 1200s, the area had a substantial iron industry. Earlier excavations in the surrounding area found that ore was extracted from bogs and exported across Europe.
The coins are also in exceptional condition. Archaeologists say that is due to the lack of stones in the soil and the annual flooding of the field by the Glomma, Norway’s largest river, which has protected them from erosion.
After announcing the find on April 29, Innlandet County Municipality praised Sætre and Sørlie, who have both taken the council’s detectorists courses.
“They have been very cooperative and actively contributed to ensuring that we have been able to secure and document the find in the best possible way,” May-Tove Smiseth, an Inland County archaeologist, said in a statement.
“This is an exemplary example of how it should be done.”
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