1000-year-old Viking sword found in Finland

World
Europe

A Viking-era sword dating back around 1,000 years was found in a grave in southern Finland, the Finnish public broadcaster said Wednesday, weeks after a similar sword was discovered in neighboring Norway.

A man using a metal detector last spring found the well-preserved weapon near the southern Finnish lake Loppijarvi, about 100 kilometers (62 miles) north of Helsinki, the broadcaster Yle reported, following an announcement of the discovery on Tuesday by the Finnish National Board of Antiquities.

Tuomas Pietila, who searches for historical artifacts as a hobby, had seen the sword's blade sticking out from the ground in a burial site, Yle said.

A knife, a circular brooch and a bone comb were also found next to the sword, which is to be exhibited at the Helsinki National Museum next year.

This kind of discovery is rare but not the first in the Scandinavian region.

A Norwegian archaeologist said on September 5 that a Viking-era sword dating from around 850-950 AD was found in the mountainous county of Oppland located around 270 kilometers north of Oslo.

"This is an amazing find of a sword that has stayed exceptionally well for over 1,100 years," Espen Finstad told Norwegian public broadcaster NRK at the time.

DNA evidence also proved that a famous Viking warrior buried at the Birka archaeological site 30 kilometers west of Stockholm was a woman, according to a September 8 study published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.

This discovery sheds light on gender roles among the Vikings and offers insight into the perception that the warrior role was mainly associated with men.

"Already in the early Middle Ages, there were narratives about fierce female Vikings fighting alongside men," the journal said.

"Although, continuously reoccurring in art as well as in poetry, the women warriors have generally been dismissed as mythological phenomena."

6331km

Source(s): AFP