Conny Waters – AncientPages.com – Over 1,000 years in the past, Vikings selected to bury and conceal a beneficial silver treasure, which has now been found by a farmer getting ready a brand new tractor highway on a mountain slope in southern Norway. This raises the query: why was the treasure hidden beneath what seems to have been the home of thralls?
Throughout the Viking period, slaves—typically known as “thralls”—have been usually prisoners of warfare, people in debt, or descendants of slaves. The Vikings captured these slaves throughout their notorious raids throughout Europe, the British Isles, and even so far as North Africa and the Center East.
Credit score: Adobe Stock – Deivison
Whereas excavating at a Viking farm in Årdal in Hjelmeland, archaeologists uncovered quite a few intriguing artifacts. Beneath the thralls’ home and round 20 centimeters under the floor, they discovered 4 massive silver arm rings, every uniquely adorned.
“The excavation now reveals that this was as soon as a big and highly effective Viking farm,” Demuth acknowledged in a press release from the College of Stavanger. The Viking farm included a number of buildings for each folks and animals. Archaeologists additionally found remnants reminiscent of soapstone pots, rivets, knife blades, and whetstones for sharpening instruments.
“I initially thought we have been coping with twisted copper wires, which are sometimes present in agricultural land,” discipline archaeologist Ola Tengesdal Lygre says within the press launch.
“However after I noticed that there have been a number of and that they weren’t copper, however silver, I spotted we had stumbled upon one thing vital,” he says.
Volker Demuth highlights how uncommon this discover is, as it’s unusual for archaeologists to find such artefacts precisely the place the Vikings initially positioned them.
“Because the silver treasure is situated precisely the place the Vikings buried it within the ninth century, it can provide us utterly new insights into life and society within the Viking Age,” says archaeologist and undertaking supervisor Volker Demuth. Credit score: Volker Demuth, Archaeological Museum, College of Stavanger
“Often, beneficial objects like these are present in plowed fields, the place they’re displaced from their unique context. Since this silver treasure hasn’t been moved, it presents us recent insights into life and society in the course of the Viking Age,” he says.
Have been The Vikings Compelled To Flee To The Mountains?
In line with Science in Norway, “the Viking farm’s strategic location allowed it to have full management over the doorway to the fjord.
The excavation additionally reveals that the farm was burned down in some unspecified time in the future. The Viking Age in Norway lasted from 800 to 1050. The farm and silver treasure probably date to the 900s, a marked by appreciable unrest.”
Demuth considers the likelihood the residents of this farm needed to flee from an assault. If this have been the case, it could make sense for them to cover their valuables earlier than escaping into the mountains.
Presently, there have been no silver mines in Norway, indicating that the silver should have been sourced from overseas. Vikings acquired silver by commerce, acquired it as presents, or seized it throughout raids. The newly found arm rings resemble the silver neck rings unearthed within the area in 1769. Archaeologists haven’t dismissed a possible hyperlink between these two discoveries.
Following this vital discover, excavation efforts on the over 1,000-year-old Viking farm are ongoing. In line with Museum Director Ole Madsen of the College of Stavanger’s Museum of Archaeology, the silver treasure shall be exhibited as quickly as attainable.
Conservator Hege Ingjerd Hollund and archaeologist Volker Demuth are fastidiously unearthing a Viking treasure from a clump of soil contained in the museum in Stavanger. Picture: Anniken Celine Berger
“That is a rare discover that gives us with distinctive perception into one of the crucial vital durations in Norwegian historical past: the Viking Age,” he says.
When archaeologists uncover gold treasures in Norway, they usually date again to the Migration Interval, 400-570. In distinction, gold treasures from the Viking Age are much less frequent; as an alternative, silver artifacts are extra ceaselessly discovered. Throughout this period, silver largely supplanted gold’s earlier prominence.
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Viking Age silver jewellery was typically common from melted-down cash, many originating from Arabic areas. Rogaland stands out because the Norwegian area with the best variety of Viking Age silver finds, suggesting vital interactions between Vikings from this space and distant components of the world.
Apparently, quite a few discoveries have been made in additional distant inland areas. This raises intriguing questions on Viking commerce routes and their broader interactions with different cultures.
Written by Conny Waters – AncientPages.com Employees Author