One lucky man in the town of Vindelev, Denmark, has stumbled upon a once in a lifetime discovery.
Using a metal detector, the man discovered a cache of 1,500-year-old gold objects, according to the Vejlemuseerne, the museum consortium in Vejle, Denmark.
The treasure trove was found in a small town 240km from the capital of Copenhagen, and offered up more than two pounds of gold.
It includes coins from the Roman Empire as well as medallions known as bracteates, which would have been sewn onto clothing and worn as ornamentation
These newly discovered objects are expected to go on view at the Vejlemuseerne in February 2022.
Among the bracteates discovered in one inscribed with unique text that translates to “the High”, which may be a reference to a ruler at the time, or to the Norse god Odin.
That medallion, along with all the other objects found, dates back to the 6th century C.E.
It’s suspected that these pre-Viking objects may have been buried amid the ongoing threat of ecological devastation.
In the year 536, a volcano erupted in Denmark, creating a giant ash cloud and a subsequent famine in the country.
Experts believe that, amid the chaos, the inhabitants of modern-day Denmark rejected their rulers and parted ways with gold objects bearing these leaders’ images, either as a way of hiding the medallions from enemies or as a means of placating angry gods.
Archaeologists at the Vejlemuseerne are calculating the possibility that the town of Vindelev was the epicentre of a powerful empire during the Iron Age.
Before the discovery of the artifacts, “there was nothing that could make us predict that an unprecedented warlord or great man lived here, long before the kingdom of Denmark arose in the following centuries,” said Mads Ravn, a research director at the Vejlemuseerne, in a statement.
Image credit: Vejlemuseerne
This article first appeared on Over60.