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Erlend Bore needed to get out of the house more. That’s what his doctor told him. He suggested that Bore find a hobby to keep him outdoors. So Bore thought back to his youth and a long-abandoned childhood dream of becoming an archaeologist. He lived in Sola, in a breezy coastal region of Norway surrounded by fjords and — supposedly — inlaid with a rich history from the tribes, Vikings and traders who once walked its shores.
Bore, 51, decided to buy a metal detector. He figured trawling the beaches around his home for some of that history would keep him occupied.
For much of the summer, Bore struck out, but he was enjoying his new pastime. Bore studied his metal detector and asked other hobbyists for help learning to use it. He buried some of his wife’s jewelry in the lawn to test the device’s tuning. He wasn’t discouraged when an early, shiny gold find turned out to be the remnants of a chocolate coin.
Then, in late August, Bore’s metal detector started beeping as he swept through grassland on the nearby island of Rennesøy. Inches down in the dirt was a scattering of metal spheres and pendants. They were heavy, remarkably bright in color — and golden.
“The pulse went sky high at that point,” Bore told The Washington Post.
Bore’s hobby had led him to what Norwegian archaeologists called the “find of the century.” He dug up a bounty of relics — nine pendants, 10 small beads and three rings, totaling about three ounces of gold that researchers said dated back to around 500 A.D., forged from gold probably from the Roman Empire. The pendants were “bracteates,” pieces of jewelry worn as good-luck charms. They were charged with historical significance, from the cultural motifs the pendants carried to what experts theorized was the context of their burial, as religious offerings during a period of environmental catastrophe.
For a beginner hobbyist to find nine of the Nordic Iron Age trinkets buried in a pile, two months after buying a metal detector?
“Completely crazy,” said Sigmund Oehrl, an archaeology professor at the University of Stavanger, who is studying Bore’s finds.
“In Norway, the last time that we had a comparable find, this was in the 19th century,” Oehrl said. “I don’t believe that I will experience something like that in my life again.”
Bore, a food safety quality manager, said he has a mind for details and was eager to throw himself into his new hobby after his doctor’s recommendation. He studied the laws governing hobbyist metal-detecting in Norway and made calls to archaeologists and town councils before testing the metal detector in his backyard. When he asked his wife for some gold and silver to practice with, she insisted on choosing the items.
“You’re not going in my jewelry box,” Bore said she told him.
The intrigue of the hobby kept Bore motivated after he found only trash and a few coins in his first few searches. Then he branched out to Rennesøy, where he made an agreement to search a hilly stretch of a farmer’s land near the coast. As Bore looked across the rocky landscape, intuition — or maybe just the luckiest of guesses — guided him to the treasure, he said.
“I got this strong feeling,” Bore said. “Where would I go, if this was really, really long ago, to get a clear view of the area below me?”
Bore found a lookout on a rocky hill, and his detector reported a strong signal. When he found the items, he rushed back to the farmer’s house to share the news. Bore, the farmer and the farmer’s wife gathered the relics on a plate and took a photo, and Bore called a regional cultural heritage department. The line went quiet as Bore shared the image of his find.
“After a few seconds, he answered that, ‘You have found gold treasure from, like, 1,500 years ago,’” Bore said. “And we just sat back in the chair, the three of us, like ‘Whoa.’ We went quiet for a few seconds.”
Oehrl, the Stavanger archaeologist, accompanied a research team to the location the next day. They didn’t find additional gold, but that didn’t dampen the excitement around Bore’s discovery. The bracteates, in excellent condition, were a rare window into a turbulent period of Scandinavian history, he said.
The bracteates were probably made by talented goldsmiths in the region, using gold melted down from coins paid to Scandinavians who fought for the Roman Empire, Oehrl said. Each carried an intricate design of a horse motif that Oehrl said could be linked to later records of Old Norse pagan myths. Oehrl added that the bracteates’ designs might have symbolized healing and resurrection — an important prayer during a period marked by a crippling volcanic winter, when ash from the eruption of an Icelandic volcano cast Europe into 18 months of darkness and caused crops to fail.
“I felt, 1,500 years ago, somebody was here, and he was frightened to death because the end of the world was approaching, so to say,” Oehrl said. “And he had to hide his gold or even to sacrifice it to the gods.”
“That’s a special feeling,” he added. “We don’t understand the whole story behind it. But this is a moment where you come close to the people of the past.”
The relics are being cleaned by a conservation team at Stavanger. They’ll be put on display at the university’s Museum of Archaeology afterward. The timing of Bore’s find was particularly serendipitous, said museum director Ole Madsen: The museum had just opened two exhibitions on gold artifacts and the Nordic Iron Age.
Bore was required by law to turn over the relics, but he and the farmer who owned the land will be given a reward for the discovery. The reward will be calculated based on the amount of gold found and its value, Oehrl said.
“I have to say, that’s not the reason why people do it,” Oehrl added, noting that he and his colleagues have enjoyed collaborating with other hobbyists scouring the country with metal detectors. “The [hobbyists], I’m sure, they will do it and they will do it in a professional way even without any reward. They are really interested in the history of their country and in the history of the region. And they want to help us.”
Bore is still reeling from the attention his discovery generated, he said. He knows he’ll struggle to top the find of the century, but he plans to continue searching.
“I know it’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing,” he said. “When it’s settled down a bit, I will be back out with my detector.”
Source link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/09/24/norway-metal-detector-gold-discovery/