2023-09-08 04:28:02
COPENHAGEN (AP) — At first, the Norwegian man thought his metal detector had found buried chocolate coins. It turned out that they were nine earrings, three rings and 10 gold pearls that someone may have used as fancy jewelry 1,500 years ago.
Erlend Bore, 51, was responsible for the discovery a few weeks ago on the island of Rennesoy, near the city of Stavanger. Bore had bought his first metal detector earlier in the year as a hobby following his doctor ordered him to get out of it instead of sitting on the couch.
Ole Madsen, director of the Stavanger University Archaeological Museum, said finding “so much gold at the same time is extremely unusual.”
Bore began walking his metal detector around the mountainous island in early August. The university said in a statement that it first found some scrap metal, but later discovered something that was “completely unrealistic”: the treasure weighing just over 100 grams (3.5 ounces).
According to the laws in Norway, objects that are older than 1537 and coins older than 1650 are considered state property and must be returned to the authorities.
Associate Professor Håkon Reiersen, a member of the museum, said the gold earrings — thin, flat gold medals with single-sided images called bracteates — date to around AD 500. C., in the so-called Migration Period in Norway, which is located between the years 400 and 500, when there were widespread migrations in Europe.
The gold earrings and pearls were part of a “very showy necklace” crafted by skilled jewelers and worn by an influential member of society at the time, Reiersen said. He added that “a similar discovery has not been made in Norway since the 19th century, and it is also a very unusual discovery in a Scandinavian context.”
An expert on such earrings, Professor Sigmund Oehrl, from the same museum, said some 1,000 gold bracteates have been found so far in Norway, Sweden and Denmark.
He said the symbols on the earrings usually show the Norwegian god Odin healing his son’s sick horse. In the Rennesey, the horse’s tongue protrudes from the gold earrings, and its “slumped, crooked-legged posture shows that it’s injured,” Oehrl said.
“The symbol of the horse represented illness and anguish, but at the same time the hope of healing and a new life,” he added.
The plan is to display the discovery at the Archaeological Museum in Stavanger, some 300 kilometers (200 miles) southwest of Oslo.
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