THE VIKING TREASURE IN STRANDBY WAS FOUND ON SEPTEMBER 9th 2012
Sunday the 9th of September, Michael Stokbro was walking around a local field with his metal detector. The reason he was walking on this specific field was because Michael had a feeling that right here, there had to be something to be found. This feeling Michael had gotten through research, and through old tales and myths, and all of this combined had given him the idea that this was where he was supposed to look if he wanted to find clues that lead to this area’s past.
The first thing Michael found was a piece of hack silver from a silver bar and shortly thereafter the first coin was unearthed. It was clear that it was a very old coin that had been found.
Michael confirmed various signals in the vicinity, so he immediately called his brother, Peter Stokbro – as well as the rest of his family who were on an adjacent field – to come help him search the area closely.
Only a short while passed before their combined effort led them to find 5-6 coins of the same type and it was now apparent that they had found a buried treasure in the soil.
For about a week they searched and dug and found more coins, pieces of jewelry and hack silver, and when it got too dark to dig the time was spent researching the coins and trying to identify them. At this point Peter and Michael had also acquired the assistance of Michael’s friend Tobias Wiis, who helped dig and pick up parts, so the entire family was hard at work.
As it quickly turned out some of the coins could be identified as German, from the period of Otto II in ca. 900-1000, and this indicated that they had made a discovery dating back to the Viking Age. It also soon became apparent that among the discovered items were Danish Viking coins from the age of Harald Bluetooth, small, thin silver coins weighing only about 0.2 grams, decorated with the loveliest motifs.
That this was a discovery from the Viking Age became completely certain on the 5th day. When a silver pendant resembling Mjölnir, the hammer of Norse thunder god Thor, saw the light of day after more than a thousand years of being hidden away underground, it was an extraordinary feeling. It was now obvious that it was time to contact a museum and get the experts to help.
Jan Hammer Larsen from the Bangsbo Museum was contacted, and we told him that we had found a Viking treasure buried in Strandby.
That same evening, Jan Hammer came visiting to see what we had found. At this time we had a collection of about 80 objects consisting of hack silver, many different types of coins, jewelry and jewelry pieces. We were aware that the coins were German, English and Danish Viking coins, that the Danish coins were coined by Harald Bluetooth at the end of the 10th century, and that they were probably very rare.
That night, Jan Hammer contacted Per Lysdal from Vendsyssel Historical Museum who came to Strandby the following day. Per Lysdal saw the found items and also went to see the site of the find as well as the markings of this.
In the span of the next three days, Per Lysdal had archaeologists moved from a dig in Hjallerup to Strandby so they could help with the find, and instruct us as to how the rest of the process of surveying the objects would proceed.
Furthermore, we had help finding parts of the treasure from Michael’s friend Tobias Wiis, who is also an eager owner of a metal detector. The next few days we had to take time off from school and our jobs so we could work with the archaeologists to find more parts and survey them.
It was agreed that we should continue to find whatever was there to be found, and then mark up the finds so the archaeologists could survey them.
An exact survey of the find was required to calculate the spread of the find, and according to that determine the exact point where the treasure had been buried.
The season made it hard to start a dig, because the soil was increasingly wet and the time for frost was nearing.
The treasure had not yet been made known to the public and because it was imperative that everything findable was found before this happened, the next couple of months were spent searching the ground with metal detectors down to a depth of about 15 meters.
By the end of October, the weather forced us to stop working because the soil had become too wet, and we halted the search for the duration of the winter.
At this time the museum was already working on getting the found objects temporarily preserved in the workshop at Hammer Bakker, on identifying the various parts, finding the history surrounding the find itself and preparing to make the find known to the general public. Peter was at the preservation department at Hammer Bakker for a few days, and had an exciting and informative visit here with the conservators, who were able to give him lots of interesting information.
We were of course curious and wanted to know as much as possible about the treasure and the coins, and for this purpose we received much help from detector friend Tobias Bondesson from Malmö, who is extremely talented at finding IDs on coins and has a significant amount of knowledge on the subject. With the help of Tobias Bondesson we successfully managed to id the vast majority of the coins we had already found.
In April 2013, the frost finally loosened its hold on the earth, and we could resume our search for coins and hack silver. By the end of April, we had found everything we could find without needing to excavate. At this time we had found 267 pieces of silver from the treasure, consisting of silver coins, jewelry pieces and a great deal of hack silver.
It was decided in agreement with Vendsyssel Historical Museum that an excavation would take place on the 15th of May 2013.
On the day of the actual excavation of the treasure, we began working in the morning along with the people from Vendsyssel Historical Museum.
First, we removed the top layer of sod and searched it again with metal detectors, and when we did not find anything, ca. 3 centimeters of dirt was removed and we searched it again. We continued like this until we were all the way beneath the top soil and there was no more to be found.
This resulted in finding a lot of lovely parts of coins, hack silver and jewelry remains.
When we had dug up everything the excavation was covered back up, and the following day the discovery of the treasure was made public.
Sidsel Wåhlin, curator and archaeologist of Vendsyssel Historical Museum, made a calculation after the excavation determining how many hours with the metal detectors we had spent from we found the treasure and until it was excavated. She arrived at ca. 700 hours spent on the Strandby Treasure, and what an exciting 700 hours it has been.
It is going to be even more exciting now to find and follow the rest of the story about the treasure; where is it from and what else is hidden around here?
We have to hope that the museums and the archaeologists are quick to succeed in finding means to investigate and uncover the rest of the story, and we hope that many people will support their efforts, so everyone can learn a lot about what actually happened here in the year 990.
It is also time to say thank you to everybody for the fantastic support we have received after the discovery was made public, it is very overwhelming, and we are very grateful for the many messages we have received from people all over the world.
Special thanks go to Jan Hammer from Bangsbo Museum and Per Lysdal from Vendsyssel Historical Museum. They were the first to be told about the find, and have given us enormous amounts of support for the duration of the project.
Thanks to Sidsel Wåhlin and her staff of archaeologists from VHM who have been fantastic to work with. They have been extraordinarily helpful, and they have taught us so much and shown us trust beyond our expectations. Thanks to Sidsel for always standing by us around the time the treasure was made public, it was amazing.
Thanks to Jens Christian Moesgaard from the National Museum, we are looking forward to when you begin taking a closer look at the treasure.
