'Biggest surprise of my life': Homeowner discovers Denmark's largest Viking Age silver hoard in their backyard

While building a terrace in their backyard, a homeowner in Denmark discovered the treasure of a lifetime: more than 40 pounds (18.5 kilograms) of thousand-year-old silver buried in the ground. An analysis revealed that the finding is the country's largest Viking Age (793 to 1066) silver hoard known to researchers.

The hoard has approximately 700 silver objects, including silver bars, jewelry, 47 whole coins and coin fragments, and a small Thor's hammer, an object that was often interpreted as a sign of protection and a clue that its owner believed in the Norse pantheon of gods. About 320 of those objects were contained in a clay vessel, while the rest lay in the soil nearby. The treasure is nearly three times larger than the previous largest silver hoard from Denmark's Viking Age, according to a translated statement.

One of the silver bars is engraved with runes, a writing system used by people in Scandinavia during the Viking Age. The inscription might say "hutu," which may represent a person's name or an owner's mark, according to the statement.

The anonymous individual found the roughly 1,100-year-old hoard while building a terrace in the municipality of Rebild this past spring. Unexpectedly, they hit something that emitted a strange sound. "It should have just been a few hours of hard gardening work removing stubborn grass, stones and gravel for a new tiled terrace, but it turned out to be the biggest surprise of my life," they said in the statement.

The coins include two Anglo-Saxon silver pennies minted during the reign of King Edward the Elder (ruled from 899 to 924), according to the statement. This suggests that the hoard dates to sometime in the 10th century.

During the Viking Age, silver bars represented wealth.

The runes, which spell out "Hutu," could represent a name.

There are also Islamic coins in the hoard, and together with the Anglo-Saxon coins, they offer evidence that Viking Age Denmark had strong connections with vast regions of Europe as well as with distant eastern regions, according to Torben Sarauw, cultural heritage manager at the North Jutland Museums. There is already ample evidence of the Islamic world's connections with Scandinavians during the Viking Age, including a recent discovery that Viking pennies in a hoard found in Denmark were made from melted Islamic money.

The newfound hoard sheds light on how people in Viking Age Denmark could store, organize and hide their wealth. "When we analyze the weight of the silver objects, the treasure reveals information about the economic practices of the Viking Age," Sarauw said. "The treasure does not only consist of beautiful objects. Most of them are part of a structured value system by weight."

In fact, all the silver bars and some of the bracelets and silver fragments can be organized into specific weight groups. This indicates that the collection represented an important storage of wealth and not a random assortment.

"The treasure so clearly shows how silver functioned as wealth and a means of payment in the Viking Age," Sarauw added in the statement. "It's like finding a safe from the Viking Age."

It's unclear why the hoard was buried. It may have been hidden close to a Viking settlement, along a now-bygone road, or placed in a more remote, secret location, according to the statement. Answering that question would require major archaeological investigations, which are impossible in the developed area where the hoard was discovered.

The hoard is now being submitted for assessment at the National Museum of Denmark.

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