1,000-Year-Old Viking Age Sword Discovered In Southern Iceland
In September, 2016, a group of five goose hunters discovered a millenary quite well-preserved Viking Age sword somewhere in the Skaftárhreppur municipality from Iceland. The five men stumbled upon the artefact by chance, while on a goose hunting trip in the south of the country.
A member of the goose hunters group, Rúnar Sighvatsson, stated that the sword was ‘just lying there on the ground, waiting to be picked up’. Árni Björn Valdimarsson, the man who had initially spotted the blade, posted a photograph on Facebook depicting the artefact. Subsequently, the Icelandic Cultural Heritage Agency was interested in the millenary discovery.
Image source: www.abc.net.au via Árni Björn Valdimarsson on Facebook
The director of the agency, Kristin Huld Sigurdardottir, stated that the discovery was very rare. It has also been suggested that the site from which it was unearthed could have been a Norse burial mound in Viking Age Iceland. The sword was dated ‘circa 950 AD, or even before’, according to an interview made by the director of the agency on Visir News. It was also mentioned that the blade is the 23rd of its kind to have been discovered on Icelandic soil thus far.
Additionally, it was revealed that conservators will handle the matter with care from this point forth and that further details will be known after a thorough analysis of the object. The precise geographic location of the archaeological site where the blade was discovered was not made public by the Cultural Heritage Agency of Iceland given the fact that a survey needs to be performed on the area before countless enthusiastic tourists and amateur archaeologists would swarm in.
Documentation sources and external links:
- Goose hunters find a beautifully preserved 1000-year old Viking sword on www.icelandmag.visir.is (in English)
- Fundu sverð sem gæti verið frá árinu 1000 on www.visir.is (in Icelandic)
- 1,000-year-old Viking sword unearthed by Icelandic goose hunters on www.independent.co.uk
- Did this Viking sword belong to the ‘first Icelander’? 1,000-year-old weapon is unearthed by geese hunters on www.dailymail.co.uk
- Iceland goose hunt turns up 1,000-year-old sword on www.bbc.com
- Viking sword dating back 1,000 years found by goose hunters in Iceland on www.abc.net.au
- The Cultural Heritage Agency of Iceland on www.en.minjastofnun.com (in English and Icelandic)
- The photograph of the sword by Árni Björn Valdimarsson on www.facebook.com
