Find of the century: detectorist on sick leave goes for a walk, discovers 1,500-year-old gold treasure

While testing a new metal detector (Minelab Manticore), Erlend Bore discovered an extraordinary set of gold objects on the island of Rennesøy near Stavanger: nine bractate pendants, three rings and ten beads. Experts at the Archaeological Museum of the University of Stavanger immediately hailed it as the find of the century.

The set of nine gold pendants, three rings and a large number of small gold beads was discovered by chance on farmland in 2023, without any trace of a nearby settlement or burial site. It is one of the most important archaeological discoveries not only in the Nordic area, but throughout early medieval Europe.

The artefacts have been dated to around 500 AD, the late Migration of Peoples period. The gold is of exceptional quality, the jewellery was made with high precision and bears clear signs of elite production. The pendants have the character of bractates - massive disc-shaped or oval ornaments. They are richly decorated some with granulation and filigree. The rings are robust; they were clearly not ordinary personal jewellery but symbols of social status. The gold beads originally formed part of a necklace with pendants.

"This jewellery was made by skilled goldsmiths and worn by the most powerful members of society. It is very rare to find so many bractates together. We haven't had any finds that compare to this since the 19th century," Håkon Reiersen from the Stavanger Archaeological Museum said in a press release.

The total weight of gold and the number of elements far exceeds other depot finds from this period in Norway. The size of the assemblage and its homogeneity suggest that it was deposited as a single unit. Archaeologists agree that such a large quantity of gold must have belonged to an individual with a direct connection to the power structures of society at the time. In the context of 6th century Scandinavia, this was probably a local leader or a member of the ruling elite.

The gold was probably buried in the ground in haste, without a ceramic vessel, stone box or other protection. It is probably related to the period of deep crisis that hit Scandinavia at the turn of the 5th and 6th centuries. Climatic fluctuations, famines and pandemics fundamentally disrupted social structures. Depositing gold in the ground may have had ritual significance related to sacrificial practices.

Archaeological and environmental data from 6th-century Scandinavia point to a deep and sudden break when the landscape became depopulated, agricultural settlements disappeared and previous farming practices ceased to function. Climatologists link these changes to a series of powerful volcanic eruptions that darkened the skies over the northern hemisphere and caused the sharp drop in temperatures recorded in tree rings and ice cores since 536.

This event kicked off a period now known as the Late Antique Little Ice Age, lasting more than a century. Climatic cooling was an existential threat that forced individuals and communities to reassess their relationship to land, livelihoods and beliefs. The Golden Depot may thus have been an offering to the gods and therefore a tangible testament to the fears and crises of the time.

The brackett expert Professor Sigmund Oehrl points out that while most gold medallions from the Migration period work with the motif of healing and the return of life, the Rennesøy specimens tell a different story. Instead of divine intervention, they show a moment of weakness itself - a sick or injured horse.

According to Oehrl, this is not a denial of hope, but a slightly different formulation of it: just as the cross was promoted in the Roman world of the time as a symbol of suffering coupled with the promise of salvation, these jewels express a desire to face fear, illness and uncertainty through an image that makes sense in a time of profound change.

For Norwegian archaeology, the discovery is of fundamental importance because it provides direct evidence of the concentration of wealth in a difficult period from which only a limited number of elite objects have otherwise survived. In terms of further research, not only the study of the artefacts themselves is crucial, but also a detailed analysis of the landscape context, which may reveal previously unknown settlement or ritual structures in the area.

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Sources: sciencenorway.no, economictimes.indiatimes.com, theguardian.com

just after the discovery

detail of the gold bead

A detail of one of the bractheat

a reconstruction of a necklace

one of the three gold rings

set after removal from the ground

of one of the pendants after cleaning

the treasure contains 9 pendants, 3 rings and 10 gold corals

The finder, Erlen Bore, dreamed of one day becoming an archaeologist.

Gold medallions with horses from Norse mythology