This story began last year when a metal detectorist first found the luxurious hilt of a Viking sword in Stavanger on the west coast of Norway. The discovery was made on a farm near the site where the "Queen of Gausel" was buried, one of the richest women of the Viking Age who was buried along with a large number of valuable objects.
This spring, another member of the same metal detector club visited the area and discovered two large parts of a sword's edge. Once studied, the remains turned out to complement the handle found in 2021. But not only that. The weapon is especially rare, belonging to a type of richly ornamented steel and one of the heaviest of the Viking Age.
“It is probably what we call a type D. Of the approximately 3,000 Viking swords recovered in Norway, only about 20 pieces of this model exist and it is very likely that the majority are imports. There are copies both in Eastern Europe, such as in Hungary, and in Western Europe, especially in what is now France, Ireland and Great Britain”, explains archaeologist Zanette Glørstad, from the University of Oslo.
The researchers have not yet been able to see all the details that the steel hides, but they have already detected that part of the decoration includes elements of the typical animal style of the Germanic Iron Age (a period between the years 400 and 800), as well as geometric figures made with the so-called niello technique, which inserts a mixture of metals as black stripes on the silver.
“The lower part of the weapon is adorned in the same way as the hilt, and at each end, the crosspiece is in the shape of an animal head. The decoration may indicate that the sword was originally made in the Frankish Empire or in England, and can be dated to the early 800s,” adds Glørstad.
According to the Norwegian archaeologist, the closest example to which it can be compared is a sword discovered on the Isle of Eigg (Inner Hebrides, Scotland) that has a pommel made of bronze inlaid with silver. The steel dates from the 9th century.
“The technique (used in this sword from Norway) is of the highest quality, and both the intricate decoration and its special design make it a completely unique discovery, which will be of great interest to specialists from other parts of Europe as well. We are now very much looking forward to seeing the sword fully preserved, and then we will contact foreign researchers to clarify more about its origins," adds Zanette Glørstad.
The expert regrets, however, that for now you can only "speculate" with the owner of the steel. "It was a very impressive sword, and it must have belonged to someone with the means to acquire it and who wanted to demonstrate his high social status," she concludes.
"We knew that this area was of special importance, but finding something like this was very unexpected," says Håkon Reiersen of the Stavanger Archeology Museum. The area is especially famous for the tomb discovered by landowner Samuel Gausel in the fall of 1883. A chamber built of stone and covered with three slabs.
Inside there were about 40 objects that indicate that the woman buried there around the year 850 after Christ was very rich: jewelry, oval buckles, uniform silver buckles, silver bracelets, bronze vessels or drinking horns... placed a horse's head with a majestic harness.
