6-Year-Old Boy Discovers 1,300-Year-Old Early Viking-Era Sword in Norway

Viking-era sword recovered by an 8-year-old lad successful Norway. Credit: Innlandet County Municipality

A schoolhouse outing successful Norway ended with a important find erstwhile a six-year-old lad pulled an past sword from a plowed field. Authorities accidental the sword is astir 1,300 years old, dating to the precocious Merovingian epoch connected the eve of the Viking Age.

Henrik Refsnes Mørtvedt attends archetypal people astatine Fredheim School. His people traveled to Brandbu successful the Gran municipality, portion of Innlandet county, erstwhile helium spotted thing antithetic emerging from the soil. He and his teachers reported the find to archaeologists without disturbing it further.

Specialists confirmed the sword has a azygous cutting edge, a plan associated with a class of blades known arsenic scramasaxes oregon saxes. Such weapons were successful communal usage crossed Scandinavia from astir AD 550 to 800, a agelong of clip historians notation to arsenic the Merovingian period.

The estimated property of this leaf puts it astatine the bound betwixt that epoch and the aboriginal Viking Age, a notable modulation constituent successful Norwegian history.

County confirms sword’s age, credits students for close call

Kulturarv one Innlandet, the county’s taste practice authority, verified the sword’s age. Officials expressed pridefulness successful however the students handled the situation, noting the children recognized the value of the find and contacted an archaeologist, which was the close people of action.

Gran sits wrong Hadeland, an country of southeastern Norway with a agelong grounds of aboriginal medieval finds. The district’s sanction carries the meaning “Land of the Warrior,” and its crushed has produced burial mounds, traces of Iron Age settlement, and remnants of past farms. Researchers person returned to the country repeatedly due to the fact that of the extent of its archaeological record.

How the sword ended up wherever Henrik recovered it is inactive being investigated. Researchers are looking into whether it was primitively portion of a burial and aboriginal disturbed done generations of farming activity.

Agricultural plowing is simply a known hazard to robust artifacts, and the timely find whitethorn person spared the leaf from further damage.

A boy’s Viking-era sword arrives successful Oslo, proprietor unknown

The sword has been taken to the Kulturhistorisk Museum successful Oslo for conservation and examination. Specialists program to use X-ray imaging and worldly investigation to larn much astir however it was made and what information it is in.

Who the sword belonged to has not been determined and whitethorn ne'er be. Researchers whitethorn not beryllium capable to portion unneurotic its implicit history. What is known is that a lad connected a people travel recovered a portion of early medieval Norway that mightiness different person gone unnoticed.