Huge Trove of Viking Age Silver Unearthed in Finland
The remarkable hoard is estimated to be 1,000 years old and constitute Finland’s largest coin hoard of the era.
Following news earlier this month that a man in Denmark had discovered, in his backyard, the largest Viking Age silver hoard in the country's history, a similar occurrence has come to light in Finland where an astonished metal detectorist has unearthed the country’s largest hoard of Late Iron Age silver coins to date - which previously belonged to a five-pound stash unearthed near the southern coast in 1895.
Buried in the 11th century, the new discovery is ten-pound (4.5kg) collection and contains bits of jewelry and thousands of coins. The detectorist, Kalle Lappinen, was scanning ground in his hometown last week when his metal detector beeped. He began digging, and then his handheld probe “roared,” he told the New York Times.
“With the fury of a monkey, I dug through the soil, bottom moraine and cobblestones,” he recalls. He found “a pile of coins” about 18 inches down and, once he had “recovered from the adrenaline rush,” reported it to authorities. Then, not far away, Lappinen’s metal detector went off again, prompting him to dig a second hole - and find yet another trove of coins.
“There are quite a lot of coins in this hoard,” and they await detailed analysis, an archaeologist at the nearby Lahti City Museums told Live Science. “There will definitely be scientific articles published on the hoard as a whole, as well as more detailed studies of the coins themselves.”
Experts say that the treasure trove dates to between about 1000 and 1050 C.E. This period relates to the later part of the Viking Age, which historians typically confine to about 793 C.E. - when Vikings raided Lindisfarne in Britain - through to 1066, the date of the Norman Conquest. Lahti City Museums have thus classified the hoard as a “Viking Age” find.
