Viking Bracelet Made 1,000 Years Ago Found in Farmer's Field—'Real Shock'

A metal detectorist has found two centuries-old silver artifacts from the Viking Age—a bracelet and a coin—in the same farmer's field within a day of each other.

Jørgen Strande discovered the silver bracelet on October 28 while out metal detecting in the field, which is located in Norway's Innlandet County. He told Newsweek he was "totally surprised" by the find.

"I was in a real shock. I sat on the ground for 30 minutes just looking at it," he said. At the time, it was snowing, and the temperature was just below freezing.

While its exact age remains uncertain, the bracelet dates back to the Viking Age, which lasted from around A.D. 800 to the 11th century.

This was a period during the Middle Ages when the Vikings, a Scandinavian seafaring people, raided, colonized and traded widely across areas of Europe. They even made it as far as North Africa, the Middle East and North America.

The day before finding the silver bracelet, Strande uncovered the coin in the same field. The artifact was likely in circulation between the 10th and 11th centuries.

"I've found objects from the Viking Age before but nothing like these," he said.

After finding the artifacts, Strande took exact GPS coordinates and pictures, as well as notifying a local archaeologist. In Norway, the law requires people to hand over any objects older than the year 1537 to the government in exchange for a finder's fee.

Finders are also not allowed to properly clean the finds because archaeologists want to learn everything they can from the objects. The archaeologists prefer to do the cleaning themselves in case they find any small traces of gold or other materials.

Strande and Lars Pilø, an Innlandet County archaeologist who examined the silver bracelet piece, said it was likely used as "hacksilver" because the weight is exactly 15 grams (around 0.5 ounces). The term hacksilver refers to fragments or pieces of silver items that were commonly used as currency or bullion by the Vikings.

"This kind of hacksilver first showed up when metal detection became popular," Pilø told Newsweek. "Before that, it was usually found in treasure troves, usually alongside Arabic dirham coins. They tell about a time when silver objects were used as payment.

"Detecting finds like these, together with dirham coins and weights, tells us that the silver economy was in full swing in the inland farms of Norway and not just at trading places near the sea," Pilø said.

Strande said it's possible he will find the remaining fragments of the silver bracelet during future metal detecting excursions.