11th-century Gold earring discovered in Denmark

A stunning gold earring discovered in Denmark may have been gifted by the Emperor of Byzantium to a Viking chief 1,000 years ago, experts claim. Dating from the 11th century, the ‘completely unique’ gold jewellery has never been seen before in the Nordic countries.

Likely one of a pair, it was found by a metal detectorist in a field near Bøvling in West Jutland, Denmark. It’s thought to have been originally crafted in Byzantium or Egypt and is potential evidence the Vikings had connections all the way around the Mediterranean.

The Byzantine Empire (395 to 1204 and 1261 to 1453), also known as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was a powerful civilization based in Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul).  

It’s now being exhibited in Denmark National Museum’s Viking exhibition ‘Togtet’, which translates as ‘The Cruise’ and is all about Viking travels to the Middle East. Experts have so far been unable to find a similar earring in the area that may have formed a pair.  

‘It is completely unique to us, we only know of 10 to 12 other specimens in the whole world, and we have never found one in Scandinavia before,’ said Peter Pentz, inspector at the National Museum Denmark. 

‘We had expected to find such a fine and invaluable piece of jewellery like this together with a large gold treasure or in a royal tomb and not on a random field in Bøvling.’ 

The find consists of a crescent-shaped gold plate inserted in a frame made of gold threads adorned with small gold balls and gold ribbons. 

Its crescent-shaped plate is covered with an enamel, now slightly cracked, which would have been created by a special technique involving breaking and powdering glass before melting it with metal so it becomes opaque. 

The motif of the enamel is two stylised birds around a tree or a plant, which symbolises the tree of life. This type of jewellery is known especially from Muslim Egypt and Syria and from Byzantium and Russia. 

In terms of style and craftsmanship, it’s similar to the Dagmark cross – an 11th or 12th-century Byzantine relic. The earring and the Dagmark Cross are thought to both date from the Viking Age or the earliest Middle Ages and were likely not traded but donated by kings and emperors.

That explains why the Dagmark cross was found in a queen’s grave, at St. Bendt’s Church in Ringsted, Denmark in 1683. In contrast, the new treasure was found in a field in Bøvling without known Viking sites nearby, so how it ended up there is, therefore, a bit of a mystery. 

The discoverer of the priceless find was 54-year-old Frants Fugl Vestergaard, who had searched the field many times before in the hunt for ‘danefæ’ – gold and silver in the earth without an owner. 

As his detector gave a faint bleep, he picked up a clump of earth and crushed it in his hand to find the earring peeping out. 

‘”Stop it”, I think, and then time stands still for me,’ he told the National Museum.

‘I get very humbled and wondered why I should find that piece and then even in West Jutland, where there is so much between the finds. It’s like getting a text from the past. 

‘You always yearn to find something beautiful, a top find, and then you suddenly have it in your hands. It is completely inconceivable.’  

One explanation for how it got there may be that many Vikings went into war service for the Byzantine emperor, who had a bodyguard consisting of warriors from Scandinavia. 

Icelandic sagas show that mercenaries came home from the East with silk and weapons, and it is also said that the emperor occasionally donated fine gifts to his bodyguard.

So the earring could have been given personally by the emperor to a trusted Viking in the bodyguard and was then lost under unknown circumstances in Denmark. 

The find confirms that West Jutland has always had strong connections around the world,’ said Astrid Toftdal Jensen, an inspector at Holstebro Museum, which is near its finding place. Jensen hopes the earring can be lent to the museum at a later date so that it can be seen in the area where it was found.        

Ancient human sacrifice victim’s last meal revealed

Shortly before his violent death in 400 B.C., a man — whose remains are known as Denmark’s famous bog body “Tollund Man” — ate a meal of porridge and fish, a new study finds.

Tollund Man also had several parasitic infections from whipworms and mawworms, as well as the first reported case of tapeworm ever found in an ancient body preserved in a bog, said the researchers, who made the finding by studying a piece of Tollund Man’s colon.

“We have been able to reconstruct the last meal of Tollund Man in such great detail that you can actually recreate the meal,” study lead researcher Nina Nielsen, an archaeologist and head of research at Museum Silkeborg in Denmark, told Live Science. “That’s quite fascinating because you can get so close to what actually happened 2,400 years ago.

The ancient man’s remains were found in 1950 by a family from the nearby village of Tollund while they were digging for fuel in a peat bog. His body — and the rope tied around his neck — were so well preserved, the family thought he was a recent murder victim, prompting them to call the police, according to Museum Silkeborg. 

But it soon became apparent that the Tollund Man had lived long ago and that the low-oxygen environment of the peat bog had preserved his remains. Over the years, studies have found that he died between 405 B.C. and 380 B.C., at the beginning of the Danish early Iron Age, and that he was between 30 and 40 years old when he died in a possible human ritual sacrifice.

Tollund Man had been hanged and placed in a sleeping position in a peat pit — an “extraordinary treatment” given that most dead people from that time and place were cremated and buried on dry land, the researchers wrote in the study.

A 1951 study on Tollund Man’s gut found that he chowed down on porridge for his last meal. However, techniques to analyze the gut have improved since then, so a team of researchers took another look at Tollund Man’s last few bites.

Last meal

By looking at a previously cut and preserved piece of Tollund Man’s large intestine, the team found that the 1951 study was fairly accurate but had missed a few things, including the proportions of the meal’s ingredients.

The new analysis showed that by weight, the porridge was 85% barley (Hordeum vulgare), 9% a weed called pale persicaria (Persicaria lapathifolia) and 5% flax (Linum usitatissimum). The remaining 1% included a variety of seeds, including those from the weed corn spurrey (Spergula arvensis), the mustard family plant gold of pleasure (Camelina sativa) and three wetland plants: marsh willowherb (Epilobium palustre), compact/soft rush (Juncus conglomeratus/effusus) and marsh violet (Viola palustris). In addition, the team found pollen from barley, grasses and open dryland plants.

Barley and flax grow in different seasons, so the seeds of the weed pale persicaria were “presumably harvested along with the barley crop,” the researchers wrote in the study.

Usually, when farmers clean and sieve grain, the small weed seeds that were collected alongside it, such as those from pale persicaria, fall out, Nielsen said. But it appears that in Tollund Man’s case, this waste material — including tiny bits of charcoal, charred food crust (indicating the porridge had been cooked in a clay vessel) and sand grains — was added to the porridge, possibly as a ritual practice, she said.

A chemical and protein analysis revealed that Tollund Man ate a fatty fish along with the porridge about 12 to 24 hours before he died. While Iron Age people in Denmark ate fish, it wasn’t a large part of the diet then, the researchers noted. Additional analyses revealed parasite eggs, which Tollund Man likely got by eating raw or undercooked meat and drinking contaminated water, Nielsen said. 

The circumstances leading to Tollund Man’s death are a mystery, but the meal does offer clues, the researchers said.

“Our interpretation of Tollund Man was that he was ritually sacrificed,” Nielsen said. “At this time in the Iron Age, it was common to use wetlands for ritual activities.”

READ ALSO: HUGE AND EXQUISITE GOLD HOARD FROM IRON AGE DISCOVERED IN DENMARK

An earlier analysis revealed that though Tollund Man likely died from suffocation, his neck wasn’t broken. Perhaps a number of rituals took place before Tollund Man was hanged, including the consumption of his last meal, she said.

The study “extends our knowledge on the diet and the preparation of meals in the Danish Iron Age,” said Albert Zink, head of the Institute for Mummy Studies at Eurac Research in Bolzano, Italy, who was not involved with the research but did a similar “last meal” study on Ötzi the Iceman, who lived about 5,300 years ago in the Alps.

“It shows that it is important to re-analyze such samples, as scientific methods are continuously improving and thereby new information can be added,” Zink told Live Science in an email. “For example, we have learnt from this study that the Tollund man most likely consumed fish and meat.”

Huge and exquisite gold hoard from Iron Age discovered in Denmark

A huge gold treasure of almost 1 kilogram consisting of medallions the size of small saucers and Roman coins made into jewellery, has now seen the light of day. Amateur archaeologist Ole Ginnerup Schytz had just acquired a metal detector and was allowed to walk in the field with his old classmate. After a few hours, the detector buzzed, and then Danish history was a marked gold find richer.

“It really is a unique find. It’s something you don’t see very often, maybe every 50 years, “exclaims Mads Ravn, head of research at the Vejlemuseerne. Two days before Christmas Eve, Mads Ravn received an SMS from Ole Ginnerup Schytz, who sent a picture of the unique gold find, and asked if it was anything special?

“I replied immediately that: ‘I probably think it is,’ remembers Mads Ravn.  The find was made on a field 8 kilometres from Jelling. So far, the exact location of the find is kept secret so that it is not run over by amateur archaeologists looking for gold. 

“There is no more gold,” emphasizes Mads Ravn. 

Large medallions are completely unique

The treasure has since been examined and is dated to have been buried in the 500s. Especially the medallions as large as small saucers stand out in the eyes. These are some of the largest found in Denmark. 

“The size is spectacular because they are usually the size of a 5 kroner,” says Mads Kähler Holst, who is an adjunct professor of archaeology at Aarhus University and who has not been involved in the gold discovery. 

“But the pictorial world and the inscription on them are also really interesting,” he adds. 

The medallions are decorated and are known as a special type of medallions called bracteate. It was a kind of medallion that was given away to alliance partners, explains Lisbeth Imer, museum inspector and senior researcher at the National Museum:

“It was a kind of piece of jewellery that you wore around your neck, and in that way, you could show who you were in alliance with,” explains Lisbeth Imer, who researches runes.

Early signs of Norse mythology

The medallions are just decorated with runic inscriptions and motifs that possibly refer to the rulers and nobles of the time, which is very common. One of the finds stands out, however, as it brings to mind Nordic mythology.  On the medallion is printed a man’s head with a braid and some runes. Under the head is seen a horse and in front of a bird with which the man communicates. There is a runic inscription between the horse’s muzzle and forelegs, which according to the preliminary interpretations says ‘houaʀ’; ‘the tall’. 

‘The High’ may refer to the ruler who abolished the find but is also in later mythological contexts associated with the god Odin. The high is one of the names by which Odin is later known. But typically we only see it many hundreds of years later. We know it, among other things, from the Icelandic Edda poems, which perhaps in oral form date back to the 9th century, “says Lisbeth Imer.

“It may be a sign that Nordic mythology and the way of thinking in the later Viking Age was more widespread than we already thought around the year 500, which is 300 years before the Viking Age,” adds Mads Ravn from Vejlemuseerne.  

Insanely heavy Roman coins

In addition to the medallions, the treasure also consists of a handful of Roman coins that have been turned into jewellery. The coins are insanely valuable (expression of how large a part of a metal mixture is made up of a precious metal, ed.). They are wildly heavy and have almost 24 carats. These are some that you have picked up in Rome or served in the Roman army, “says Mads Ravn. 

It is not uncommon for Roman gold at that time to end up in dark northern Europe. It is popularly said that the downfall of the Roman Empire began around the year 395. Since then, the city was plundered by Germans. 

“We are back at the time of the migration. The Roman Empire has fallen and they are pumping huge amounts of gold into the rest of Europe. Much of that gold ends up in Scandinavia, “says Mads Kähler Holst and continues:

‘The great change of power in Europe between Romans and Germans took place at that time. As a result of these upheavals, a new elite emerges in the 5th century. That is the story that the find is based on, “he explains. The gold treasure is so valuable that it has no doubt been dug down by a powerful great man or warlord at that time. But scientists do not yet know who the powerful Iron Age persona was.  

The find may be connected to the Jelling Kings

This week, however, they got a little wiser. Although the treasure was found last winter, archaeologists from the Vejlemuseerne have only had the opportunity to excavate the site this summer. In this connection, they have now found out that the treasure has been buried in a longhouse, located in a village consisting of 3-4 farms, as it looks so far. 

That the treasure was found in a house is interesting for several reasons. This indicates that the rich and powerful lord has been established in the area and is not only driven past the area, which is only 8 kilometres from Jelling. 

Jelling is known as a centre of power in the Viking Age, which broke through in the 10th century when first Gorm the Old ruled over Jutland, and Harald Bluetooth later raised the Jelling stones and ‘made the Danes Christian’.

However, we know very little about what the area looked like before that time. Large royal seats such as Lejre and Uppsala have roots from around the 5th century. But we do not know Jelling’s history from before the 10th century very well, «says Mads Kähler Holst.

Thus, there is a significant part of the story of how Denmark came to be, which we do not quite understand yet. Here, the new gold treasure may play a role. It raises a discussion about whether the gold find here has a connection to the Jelling kings from the 10th century, points out Mads Kähler Holst. He emphasizes, however, that there is still a large black hole of 400 years from the year 500 to the 900s, but it is likely that there has already been a local power foundation for centuries before Jelling really became a central part of the map of Denmark.

We have enough knowledge to conclude that there has lived an important little king or warlord who has been involved in the struggle for a united Denmark, long before we thought. The discovery of the enormous amount of gold shows that the site has been a centre of power in the late Iron Age, “emphasizes Mads Ravn.  Several other small villages have also been found in the area around Jelling from that time, says the head of research. 

The gold treasure will be exhibited next year

Mads Ravn and his colleagues from the Vejlemuseerne obviously want to dig further in the secret place near Jelling, so they can find out more about who was behind the burial of such a precious treasure.  The initial analyzes from the area show that the tax was buried, in roughly the same period as the houses were used. However, archaeologists have planned to make carbon-14 datings at the site so they can get even more accurate knowledge of when the houses are from.

However, the excavation work is over, as there is a lack of time and funds to continue digging in the area, Mads Ravn announces. If you have become curious about the new gold find, you can be happy that the Vejlemuseerne is exhibiting the treasure in a large Viking exhibition that opens on 3 February 2022.  

The exhibition tells the story of Harald Blåtand’s eastern connections and of the early state formation that created the foundation for the Jelling dynasty. The Viking exhibition is made in collaboration with the Moesgaard Museum, which also has an exhibition that tells about other aspects of the Vikings’ travels to the east.

In the frugal last meal of a man 2,400 years ago, scientists see signs of human sacrifice

When the Tollund man was discovered in a bog in Denmark 71 years ago, he was so well preserved that his researchers thought he was the victim of a recent murder.

It took archaeologists to reveal that he was thrown into the bog almost 2,400 years ago and was first hanged – a braided animal skin noose was still around his neck. The careful arrangement of body and face – his closed eyes and weak smile – suggested that he may have been killed as a human sacrifice, rather than executed as a criminal.

The suggestion that Tollund’s man was killed as a human sacrifice has now been reinforced by a study of the condemned man’s last frugal meal, made from a detailed investigation of the contents of his digestive tract: a porridge of barley, flax and pale persicaria.

Pale persicaria seeds are the key to this Iron Age murder mystery, said archaeologist Nina Nielsen, head of research at the Danish Museum in Silkeborg and lead author of the study published Tuesday.

The plant grows wild among barley crops, but evidence from Iron Age grain storage shows that it was generally cleaned as a weed during threshing. This suggests that it was part of the “threshing waste” that was deliberately added to the porridge – possibly as part of a ritual meal for those condemned to die by human sacrifice.

“Was it just a regular meal? Or was the trash hype something you only included when people ate a ritual meal? Nielsen said. ” We do not know it. “

The contents of the preserved intestines of the Tollund man were examined soon after its discovery. But the new study refines that initial examination with much improved archaeological techniques and instruments.

“In 1950, they were only looking at the well-preserved kernels and seeds, not the very fine fraction of the material,” Nielsen said. “But now we have better microscopes, better ways of analyzing material and new techniques. So that means we could get more information out of it. “

In addition to revealing the clue of threshing waste added to his last meal, the researchers found that it was probably cooked in a clay pot – pieces of overcooked crust can be seen in the tracks – and that it had also eaten fish. They also found he was suffering from several parasitic infections when he died, including tapeworms – likely from a regular diet of undercooked meat and contaminated water, Nielsen said.

Tollund Man is one of dozens of Iron Age bog bodies around 2,500 to 1,500 years ago that have been discovered across northern Europe. They were mummified in peatlands by the low oxygen levels, low temperatures, and water made acidic by the layers of decaying vegetation, or peat, therein.

A few appear to have been victims of accidents, possibly people who drowned after falling into the water. But most, like the Tollund man, were killed and deliberately placed in the bogs, with their bodies and features carefully arranged. Archaeologists believe they were selected as human sacrifices, possibly to avert impending disaster like famine.

Miranda Aldhouse-Green, professor emeritus of history, archeology and religion at Cardiff University in the UK and author of the book ‘Bog Bodies Uncovered: Solving Europe’s Ancient Mystery’, said the seeds of pale persicaria and other traces of threshing waste in Tollund Man’s latest slurry are further evidence that he was sacrificed.

“It reinforces the idea that he was either humiliated by being given something disgusting and horrible to eat, or it actually reflected the fact that society was in a downward spiral where food was scarce,” she said. declared.

The idea that the victims of human sacrifices had somehow been “ashamed” before death was also reflected in their burials in bogs, instead of the usual burials in graves and dry graves, she said.

The preservative properties of peatlands were well known to people of the Iron Age – many archaeological objects from that era, including pieces of expensive pottery, were also deliberately deposited there – and it may be that the preservation of a bog body was intended to preserve it. to join his ancestors. The bogs were seen as gateways to another kingdom.

“If you put a body in the bog, it wouldn’t decompose – it would stay between the realms of the living and the dead,” Aldhouse-Green said.

There is evidence that threshing waste was added to the last meal of another Iron Age bog body found in Denmark in 1952, that of Grauballe Man, who was also said to have been killed as a human sacrifice. Although more than 100 bog bodies have been found, only 12 are well enough preserved that their last meals can be analyzed, Nielsen said, and she now hopes to seek further evidence of the ritual practice.

The Man from Tollund now occupies a display case in a special gallery in the Silkeborg Museum, where Nielsen can see him almost every day.

“You are face to face with a person from the past,” she said. “He’s 2,400 years old, it’s really amazing.

DNA Analysis Reunites Viking Relatives 1,000 Years Later

The AFP reports that DNA analysis has linked the remains of two men who died some 1,000 years ago.

Separated for 1,000 years, two Viking warriors from the same family were reunited on Wednesday at Denmark’s National Museum, as DNA analysis helps shed light on the Vikings’ movements across Europe.

One of the Vikings died in England in his 20s in the 11th century, from injuries to the head. He was buried in a mass grave in Oxford. 

The other died in Denmark in his 50s, his skeleton bearing traces of blows that suggest he took part in battles.

DNA mapping of skeletons from the Viking era — from the eighth to the 12th century — enabled archaeologists to determine by chance that the two were related.

“This is a big discovery because now you can trace movements across space and time through a family,” museum archaeologist Jeanette Varberg told AFP.

Two of her colleagues spent more than two hours on Wednesday piecing together the skeleton of the man in his 20s, from the remains freshly arrived from Oxford.

The 150 bones have been lent to the Danish museum by the Oxfordshire Museum in Britain for three years.

The historical consensus is that Danish Vikings invaded Scotland and England from the late eighth century.

The younger of the two men “may have been cut down in a Viking raid, but there is also a theory that they (the skeletons in the mass grave) were victims of a royal decree by English King Ethelred the Second, who commanded in 1002 that all Danes in England should be killed,” Varberg said.

It is very rare to find skeletons that are related, though it is easier to determine the relationships for royals, according to Varberg.

While the two were confirmed to be relatives, it is impossible to determine their exact link.

They may have been half-brothers, or a grandfather and grandson, or an uncle and nephew.

“It’s very difficult to tell if they lived in the same age or they differ maybe by a generation because you have no material in the grave that can give a precise dating. So you have a margin of 50 years plus or minus,” Varberg said.

Viking Burials Surveyed on Danish Island

According to a statement released by Flinders University, a team of researchers from Flinders University and Wessex Archaeology surveyed Kalvestene, a Viking burial site on the Danish island of Hjarnø, and compared their findings with a map made in the seventeenth century by the antiquarian Ole Worm.

As part of the first survey since the National Museum of Denmark discovered and restored 10 tombs on a small island off the eastern coast almost a century ago.

The burial site is made up of monuments which, according to legend, commemorate a king named Hiarni who was crowned after writing a beautiful poem on the death of the old king and who was defeated in battle on the island.

The research, published today in The Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology (UICA), shows the design of the famous Kalvestene grave field is unusual when compared to other Danish sites of the same period which typically incorporate circle, oval or triangle stone settings in addition to the ship shaped settings. Instead, there are strong parallels with Southern Swedish sites, raising questions about links between the two regions.

Ole Worm’s 1650 drawings showed more than 20 ship settings at the location, and while data collected by the researchers suggests that there were probably never as many ship settings as that, it is possible that they have identified two new ship settings.

“Our survey identified two new raised areas that could in fact be ship settings that align with Worm’s drawings from 1650. One appears to be a typical ship setting and the second remains ambiguous but it’s impossible to know without excavation and further survey,” says lead author Dr Erin Sebo at Flinders University.

The paper, The Kalvestene: a re-evaluation of the ship settings on the Danish Island of Hjarnø, was co-authored by archaeologists from Flinders University in Australia including Dr Erin Sebo, Chelsea Wiseman, Dr John McCarthy, Dr Katarina Jerbić and Associate Professor Jonathan Benjamin with geophysicist Paul Baggaley from Wessex Archaeology.

“It seems surprising that such a small grave field would be famous and yet the existence of the site was well known in medieval Scandinavia. The island was famous probably because ships would have to sail past to reach a trading centre at Horsens and artefacts from a hoard excavated by Dr Mads Ravn and his team from the Vejle Museum in 2017 suggest the island was visited by foreign traders.”

The ship settings are today interpreted as a religious symbol of the Vikings connection to Norse mythology and the god Njord. His symbol, a ship or Skidbladnir controlled wind and weather so the Vikings paid tribute to him for good sailing conditions.

The researchers analysed medieval records, aerial photogrammetric and LiDAR data collected by the Moesgaard Museum to reveal why Hjarnø is unique in terms of its construction after being adapted to the specific conditions of the small island community.

“An archaeological survey was undertaken in 2018 to record the features of the ship settings and their position in the coastal landscape at Hjarnø,” says Associate Professor Jonathan Benjamin who is the Maritime Archaeology Program Coordinator at Flinders University’s College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences.

“Each stone was measured and drawn alongside data we acquired through low altitude photography to provide the landscape, in conjunction with sonar surveying in waters near the Viking site, to check for culturally significant material but no indications of this were located during the survey.”

“While this study is unable to offer a conclusive understanding of the origins of the Kalvestene, it demonstrates the value of combining source criticism and analysis with archaeological data to contribute towards greater understanding about the site.”

Archaeologists Discover “Unique” Ceremonial Bronze Age Sword in Denmark

In the village of Håre on the Danish island of Funen, archaeologists uncovered a rare Bronze Age ritual sword. The sword dates from Phase IV of the Bronze Age, about 3,000 years ago, making it an incredibly rare discovery. What makes it much more impressive is that it is completely preserved, from bronze blade to wood grip.

Even the plant fibres it was wrapped in are extant.

The site was excavated as part of a year-long project to survey the 37-mile-long route of the Baltic Pipe gas pipeline.

Odense City Museums archaeologists were on the last leg of their excavations in west Funen when they discovered the remains of an ancient settlement where the sword was ritually deposited 3,000 years ago.

The swords were removed to the Odense City Museums for cleaning and conservation in controlled conditions. Because of the diversity of materials used in its construction, the sword had to be dismantled to see to the different preservation needs of each piece.

The fibre grip winding, which may be bast from linden wood, was unravelled and the wood and horn components separated from the metal of the blade. Samples were taken to identify the materials.

The sample from the plant fibre will be radiocarbon dated to determine when the sword was made.

The sword weighs almost three pounds (1.3 kilos), a large and very expensive amount of bronze to secure at that time. The grip was cast together with the blade shaft of the sword and covered in wood and antler/bone for a comfortable hold.

The metal was likely imported from Central Europe and then crafted by a local blacksmith. The sample from the bronze alloy of the sword will be tested to identify its exact composition and its source location.

When conservation and study are complete, conservators will reassemble the sword and put it on public display, probably at the Odense Møntergården museum which has permanent exhibits on the ancient history of Funen.

Oldest Viking Crucifix Uncovered In Denmark

The tiny gold items, created in the picture of Christ on the cross, are thought to make up Denmark’s oldest crucifix.

This newly Found crucifix will show that Danes adopted the Christian faith earlier than previously thought.

An uncommon Viking crucifix pendant was Found in a Danish field by an amateur metal detectorist two weeks before Easter.

The small gold item, created in the shape of a man with outstretched arms, resembles the Picture of Christ on the cross.

It’s approximated to be Denmark’s oldest crucifix.

Dating back to the first half of the Tenth century, the pendant is evidence of early Christianity in Denmark, according to experts at the Viking Museum situated at Ladby, where the crucifix is currently kept.

It is said by the museum to be older than Harald Bluetooth’s runic stone in Jelling.

The stones in the town of Jelling have a figure on the cross to demonstrate respect to Harald Bluetooth’s conversion of the Danes to Christianity. Up until now, the large rune stones were calculated to date back to 965 AD.

They were thought to be the earliest Images of Jesus on the cross in Denmark.

The precious item was Found by Dennis Fabricius Holm in the fields near a church village of Aunslev, on the Danish island Funen.

It is very lucky that a piece of jewelry this small persevered for the last 1,100 years in the earth.

The figure measures only 1.6 inches in height and weighs about 0.45 ounces.

While the back surface is even, the front is made of finely jointed gold threads and small filigree pellets. Located at the top is a small eye for a chain to be attached.

It is stated by the museum that it looks similar to the gilded silver cross that was Found in 1879 in Birka, close to Stockholm in Sweden. It was in a female’s grave from the Viking Age.

This silver cross dated back to the first half of the Tenth century. Yet the Aunslev cross is the first Danish specimen that is in full figure.

It was most likely worn by a Viking woman. It has not yet been decided if the cross was to display that she was a Christian or if it was just a part of the pagan Vikings’ style.

As indicated by the Swedish archaeologist Martin Rundkvist, who first announced the discovery on his blog, the crucifixes are too much alike for more than 1 or 2 people to have created them.

The first crucifix was Found at Birka close to Stockholm. Yet the second, third, and the fourth one were discovered close to Hedeby, Denmark. This is probably where all of them were produced.

The Aunlev cross will be placed on exhibit at the Viking Museum in Ladby, until the Easter holiday. Then it will be conveyed to a lab for further preservation.

In the summer it will become part of an exhibit in the exhibition that will display several recent Viking Age discoveries that were made using metal detectors.