4.10.2017 Viking sword

The preserved Viking sword was found four years ago by Tuomas Pietilä, an archaeologist, using a metal detector. The artefact dates from around the year 1000. It was in a shallow grave.

The sword was found near the northern shore of Lake Loppijärvi, which is located near the village of Loppi, about 90 kilometres from Helsinki. "I was looking at a map and this place caught my eye, so I took a metal detector and started looking," said the finder, Tuomas Pietilä.

He first discovered part of an Iron Age axe. When he saw the blade of the sword, he stopped digging and contacted Reijo Hyvönen from the Kanta-Häme amateur archaeologists' association. Together they went to the site of the discovery. They decided it was a sword. "It is probably the only complete sword ever excavated in and around Loppi," Pietilä noted.

The weapon was "buried" in a grave almost under the surface of the ground. Such shallow graves are found in the late migration period and Vikingers in Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Russia, according to Anna Wessman, an archaeologist at the University of Helsinki and the University of Chester.

She added that weapons were often buried among stones and ashes. They had been deliberately broken beforehand. "The same custom is also known from the territory of Sweden and Estonia," the archaeologist noted.

Pietilä became interested in metal-detecting after watching a 2017 TV series focusing on the amateur archaeology group Kanta-Häme. He invited a group of searchers to his property, and they found a female burial site in the field. Pietilä then thoroughly searched the site himself with a metal detector.

"About 99 per cent of what you find is rubbish, but if you're lucky you might find something interesting. Just like I managed to dig up a Viking sword," said the lucky finder.

The cemetery and sword at Loppi date back to the late Viking era, around the year 1000. Next to the sword hilt was a sheath with a knife, a circular brooch and a bone comb. A fragile ash urn was also found at the site, along with many bone fragments. An axe blade was buried a short distance away.

Scientists were very surprised by the excellent condition of the sword and the grave. "Such finds help us to build a more comprehensive picture of the Iron Age. Until now, there has really been little information about burial cemeteries in the Häme-Uusimaa border area," said Board of Antiquities researcher Jan-Erik Nyman.

Sources: https://yle.fi/, www.cnews.fr