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LAKE

Norwegian divers find 500-year old sword in lake

A sword found by divers in Mjøsa, Norway’s largest lake, may have belonged to a powerful person in the 1500s.

Published: 3 July 2018 17:00 CEST
Norwegian divers find 500-year old sword in lake
A file photo of Lake Mjøsa. Photo: Håkon Mosvold Larsen / SCANPIX

The sword is likely to have been used in battle or for beheading broadcaster NRK reports.

It was discovered by divers Miro Baricic and Knut-Erik Gylder.

“We’ve mostly found rubbish up to now. Miro, who found the sword, realised quickly that it was a sword,” Gylder said to NRK.

Local newspaper Oppland Arbeiderblad was first to report the story.

After discovering the sword, the two divers took it to Mjøs Museum. The museum’s director Arne Julsrud Berg said that there were indications the sword was around five hundred years old and that the location of its discovery suggested it may have been on board a boat.

“One theory suggests it may have been a battle sword. Two-handed swords like this were commonly used in wars or battles around Europe in the 1500s,” Julsrud Berg told NRK.

A second theory as to the sword’s original use could be that it was used for executions, he also said.

It may alternatively have been used for ceremonial purposes or to show status, the museum director added.

The sword has been relatively well preserved due to being under freshwater rather than saltwater or in air, which would have eroded it.

It will be taken to Oslo’s Museum of Cultural History for preservation, after which it will be transferred to the Norwegian Maritime Museum, NRK writes.

Julsrud Berg said that the 1500s were a tumultuous period in the region of Scandinavia where the sword was found, with a peasant result against the monarchy and a battle at nearby Østre Toten in 1508.

READ ALSO: Norwegian reindeer hunters find 1,100 year-old Viking sword

SWORD

Danes pull Medieval sword from ground in Aalborg street

A plumber and a machine operator in Aalborg made a sensational discovery when they discovered an intact and well-preserved sword while at work on Tuesday.

Published: 6 February 2019 16:22 CET
Danes pull Medieval sword from ground in Aalborg street
Photo: Nordjyllands Historiske Museum/handout/Ritzau Scanpix

After making the remarkable find, Jannic Vestergaard and Henning Nøhr called the Historical Museum of Northern Jutland, which later confirmed the discovery via its website.

Kenneth Nielsen, an archaeologist from the museum, examined the 1.1 metre-long sword and quickly concluded it was of 14th-century Medieval origin.

The sword was found in ground on top of the oldest layer of paving on Algade, one of the northern city’s central streets.

“Discoveries from here generally point in the direction of the 1300s, so the sword must have ended in the ground in that century,” Nielsen said in the press statement.

The sword is described as having an “extremely high level of workmanship” with detail that only highly-skilled armaments makers could have produced.

That includes a fuller, or a rounded longitudinal groove, a feature designed to reduce the weight of the more than metre-long weapon, which weighs just over 1 kilogram.


Photo: Nordjyllands Historiske Museum/Scanpix 2019

Swords were expensive items in the Middle Ages, and were only owned by wealthy segments of society such as the nobility.

As such, Nielsen said he was surprised by the location of the discovery in what would have been a normal town street, given the tradition for warriors to be buried with their weapons. Most swords of this kind are found at burial mounds.

The unusual placement of the discovery may be related to its being lost under violent disturbances, according to Nielsen, given that the 1300s were a period of instability in Danish history with a series of internal power struggles.

“The best explanation we can come up with is that the owner of the sword was defeated in a battle. In the tumult, it was then trod down into the layer of mud that formed the street back then,” the archaeologist said.

The sword will now be treated for conservational purposes with a view to being placed on display at the Historical Museum of Northern Jutland – which is in fact located in Aalborg’s Algade, the very street where the battle item was lost centuries ago.

READ ALSO: 3,000-year-old sword found in Denmark is 'still sharp'