Viking Treasure Hidden For 1,000 Years Unearthed

The Viking treasure was discovered by University of Stavanger archaeologists who were brought in to survey the land before the construction of a tractor road into the mountains.

It was this mountain location in Ardal, Hjelmeland where the remnants of a small house connected to a larger farm were discovered. The jewelry was found buried beneath the floor of that house in what seems to have been an attempt to hide it. 

University of Stavanger researchers Mari Krogstad Samuelsen and Ola Tengesdal Lygre discovered the Viking treasure, which was an entirely unexpected find. Lygre even initially dismissed the bracelet as copper wiring, a common artifact to find at a medieval farm site.

Upon realizing that it wasn’t copper but very pure silver and that there were multiple bracelets, they realized they’d found literal buried treasure. 

Untouched by modern tools or vehicles, the Viking treasure is remarkably well preserved making it particularly interesting to the archaeological team that uncovered it. Such finds are often uncovered unintentionally by plows or other modern machinery.

The fact that the bracelets were discovered as part of a proper archaeological survey helped to preserve the artifacts.

Due to its pristine condition, the Viking Treasure is being treated very carefully and is still being excavated. Rather than excavating the bracelets at the site, a block of soil surrounding the jewelry was removed, and the bracelets are being gradually excavated from that block in a lab.

This avoids damaging the artifacts and allows for closer analyses of the dirt block surrounding the artifacts. 

While the Viking treasure is the biggest discovery at the survey site, it’s far from the only thing archaeologists found. Multiple buildings were excavated at the site including homes and barns, resulting in several more mundane artifacts being uncovered. Knives, rivets, pots, and whetstones were all uncovered at the site, all things one would expect to find on an ancient farm, unlike the bracelets.

The remnants of the ancient buildings also tell a story and may even hold the secret to why the Viking treasure was buried beneath the floor. There are signs that the buildings were burned down, possibly as part of a raid during a period of in-fighting between clans in the region. Archaeologists believe the silver may have been hidden beneath the floor before the owners fled. 

Archaeologists are still working to gather information from the Viking treasure and its surroundings, trying to uncover more about the ancient bracelets and the people they belonged to. Materials from the buildings and fireplaces are being tested to provide a more precise date of when the structures were built and destroyed.

Finding ancient buried treasure is an exciting story but for the archaeology team that found it, there’s still plenty of work to do and much more to discover.

Source: Newsweek