A Norwegian made the “discovery of the century” in his country after finding nine pendants, three rings and ten gold pearls on the island of Rennesoey, in the south, with a metal detector dating back to 500 AD.
The rare discovery was made this summer by 51-year-old Erlend Bore on Rennesoey Island, near the city of Stavanger.
Bore bought his first metal detector earlier this year as a side income after his doctor told him to leave the house instead of lying on the couch.
Ole Madsen, director of the Archaeological Museum at Stavanger University, stressed that finding “so much gold at once is extremely unusual.”
“This is Norway’s gold find of the century,” Madsen assured, quoted by the Associated Press (AP).
In August, Bore began walking around the mountainous island with his metal detector.
This Norwegian first found some remains, but then he discovered something “completely unreal”, a “treasure” of just over 100 grams, the university emphasized in a statement.
Under Norwegian law, pre-1537 objects and pre-1650 coins are considered state property and must be transferred.
The museum’s professor Håkon Reiersen said the gold pendants — flat, thin, one-sided gold medals called ‘bracts’ — date from about 500 AD, Norway’s so-called Migration Period, which runs between 400 and about 550. migrations in Europe.
The gold pendants and pearls were part of ‘a very striking necklace’, made by qualified jewelers and used by the most powerful in society, Reiersen emphasises.
This professor added that “no similar discovery has been made in Norway since the 19th century, and it is also a very unusual discovery in the Scandinavian context.”
An expert on pendants, Professor Sigmund Oehrl, from the same museum, pointed out that about 1,000 gold ‘bracts’ have been found so far in Norway, Sweden and Denmark.
Typically, the symbols on the pendants show the Norse god Odin healing his son’s ailing horse, but in Rennesoey’s discovery, the horse’s tongue hangs from the gold pendants and “its slumped posture and twisted legs show it is injured Oehrl emphasized.
“The horse symbol represented illness and fear, but at the same time hope for healing and new life,” he added.
The Norwegian authorities plan to display the discovery at the Stavanger Archaeological Museum, about 300 kilometers southwest of Oslo.
Source: DN
