[ NEWS ] The Last Viking and his Magical Sword?
An amazing discovery of a late Viking Age sword - embellished with gold, inscriptions and other ornamentation – has now been revealed in Norway. Found in the southern Norwegian village of Langeid in 2011, the medieval weapon is being displayed for the first time at the Historical Museum in Oslo.
The sword must have belonged to a wealthy man in the late Viking Age. But who was he and what magic inscriptions are set into the decoration – in gold? Was the owner of the sword in the Danish King Canute’s army when it attacked England in 1014-15?
In the summer of 2011, archaeologists from the Museum of Cultural History in Oslo discovered a Viking burial ground in the Setesdal valley region, southwest of Oslo. In one of the graves they made a startling discovery.
“Even before we began the excavation of this grave, I realised it was something quite special. The grave was so big and looked different from the other 20 graves in the burial ground. In each of the four corners of the grave there were post holes,“ said excavation leader Camilla Cecilie Wenn of the Museum of Cultural History.
The post holes reveal that there was a roof over the grave, which is a sign that the grave had a prominent place in the burial ground. But when they dug down in the coffin in the bottom of the grave, there were few traces of gifts for the afterlife, only two small fragments of silver coins.
The coins were from northern Europe; one was probably from the German Viking Age, judging by how it was embossed, while the other was a penny minted under Ethelred II in England dating from the period 978-1016.
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