Yard Work Reveals Largest Trove of Viking Silver Ever Discovered in Denmark

A man in Rebild set out one morning to clear grass, stone and gravel from his yard so he could lay a new terrace. He expected only a few hours of hard labor under the sun. After roughly thirty minutes his spade struck something that gave off an odd sound. He set the tool aside and began working with his hands, pulling one metal piece after another from the soil. What emerged were silver bracelets, bars, coins and jewelry. Among them lay an amulet shaped like Thor’s hammer. In all, seven hundred objects came out of the ground, together weighing more than forty pounds. The find surpassed by nearly three times the previous largest Viking Age silver hoard recorded in Denmark. Forty-seven of the pieces were coins, some marked with English dates between 899 and 924 and others carrying Arabic script. A silver bar bore runes that spelled the name Hutu. Nearby lay a group of silver weights whose measurements matched several of the jewelry items, suggesting they served as standard measures for metalworkers. North Jutland Museums took the entire collection into custody for cataloguing and study. The objects align with the period of Denmark’s Christianization, when people often buried valuables during times of political change. The museums plan to place the hoard on permanent display at the Viking Museum Fyrkat so visitors can examine the scale of Viking Age silver use and trade.