A school outing in Norway ended with a significant find when a six-year-old boy pulled an ancient sword from a plowed field. Authorities say the sword is around 1,300 years old, dating to the late Merovingian era on the eve of the Viking Age.
Henrik Refsnes Mørtvedt attends first grade at Fredheim School. His class traveled to Brandbu in the Gran municipality, part of Innlandet county, when he spotted something unusual emerging from the soil. He and his teachers reported the find to archaeologists without disturbing it further.
Specialists confirmed the sword has a single cutting edge, a design associated with a category of blades known as scramasaxes or saxes. Such weapons were in common use across Scandinavia from around AD 550 to 800, a stretch of time historians refer to as the Merovingian period.
The estimated age of this blade puts it at the boundary between that era and the early Viking Age, a notable transition point in Norwegian history.
County confirms sword’s age, credits students for right call
Kulturarv i Innlandet, the county’s cultural heritage authority, verified the sword’s age. Officials expressed pride in how the students handled the situation, noting the children recognized the significance of the find and contacted an archaeologist, which was the correct course of action.
Gran sits within Hadeland, an area of southeastern Norway with a long record of early medieval finds. The district’s name carries the meaning “Land of the Warrior,” and its ground has produced burial mounds, traces of Iron Age settlement, and remnants of ancient farms. Researchers have returned to the area repeatedly because of the depth of its archaeological record.
How the sword ended up where Henrik found it is still being investigated. Researchers are looking into whether it was originally part of a burial and later disturbed through generations of farming activity.
Agricultural plowing is a known risk to iron artifacts, and the timely discovery may have spared the blade from further damage.
A boy’s Viking-era sword arrives in Oslo, owner unknown
The sword has been taken to the Kulturhistorisk Museum in Oslo for conservation and examination. Specialists plan to apply X-ray imaging and material analysis to learn more about how it was made and what condition it is in.
Who the sword belonged to has not been determined and may never be. Researchers may not be able to piece together its complete history. What is known is that a boy on a class trip recovered a piece of early medieval Norway that might otherwise have gone unnoticed.
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