Archaeologists have discovered an exceptional group of more than 250 9th century coins in a bog near Ribe, Denmark. A metal detector hobbyist found the first coin earlier this year, an extremely rare piece known as a face/deer coin after the stylized face design on the obverse and the deer going nose-to-nose with a snake on the reverse. Only 11 face/deer coins were known to exist before this summer.
Straight out of the peat, and the first time seen by people in over a thousand years!
Archaeologists surveyed the site using metal detectors and precision GPS to document every discovery. Over two days, they found 174 coins, 172 of them face/deer coins, the last two with Viking ships adorned with shields on the obverse and deer on the reverse. The coins were spread over an elongated oval about 165 by 50 feet in area, a distribution typical of coin deposits that have been scattered by repeated passes with plows. The way they were spread out suggests they were not buried in the bog, but rather placed on the ground in a single deposit, likely in a bag that was torn apart and destroyed over the centuries.
My favorite, the viking ship coin, with a big fish or even a whale underneath.
The condition of all of the coins is excellent. They were in such great shape that many of them shone like new through the clods of peat when they were recovered by the archaeologists.
Who knows why they were buried? Maybe an invasion from Frankia was imminent, or they were an offering to the Gods, or maybe it was just someone's bank (peat bog) account that no one ever tried to make a withdrawal from, and it was eventually forgotten about or lost. Can you imagine thinking, " We know great grandpa Sven buried the Viking treasure in this field somewhere..."
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