Cool Finds

A Man Unearthed a Mysterious Metal Object Sticking Straight Up From the Ground. It Turned Out to Be a 2,700-Year-Old Sword

Marcin Wiśniewski found the weapon while metal detecting in a forest near the Polish city of Gdańsk. Experts told him that it likely dates to between 900 and 700 B.C.E.

Ellen Wexler | Writer and Special Projects Editor

July 30, 2026 1:01 p.m.

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Marcin Wiśniewski was having a slow day. At first, his metal detector identified only bottle caps and beer cans. Then his machine got so quiet that he wondered whether it had stopped working. When it finally started beeping, he assumed it had detected another piece of trash.

As he dug, part of a mysterious metal artifact emerged. It was long and thin, and it was lodged firmly in the dirt. The treasure hunter realized that he’d uncovered one end of a bronze sword, which was sticking straight up from the ground.

“The object appeared before my eyes as if through a fog,” Wiśniewski says in a social media post, per a translation by TVP World’s Maria Kamińska. “My vision blurred. I looked again and thought, ‘I can’t believe it.’”

The discovery occurred on June 14, when Wiśniewski was surveying a forest in northern Poland. As he tells Radio Eska, he realized that he’d found something exciting when he uncovered a hint of the sword’s green patina.

After the initial excitement, Wiśniewski had a decision to make: Should he try to pull the sword out of the ground? He ultimately decided to rebury the artifact’s exposed end, marking the spot with a beer can he’d found nearby. Attempting to recover it himself would be too risky.

The next day, the metal detectorist sent photos of his discovery to local officials, who decided to act right away. Despite cold and rainy conditions, they returned to the forest, located near the city of Gdańsk, and conducted a careful excavation. Wiśniewski witnessed the dig and held the sword for a celebratory photo.

“I was standing in front of an object that I estimate is about 3,000 years old,” he adds in the post. “Someone, for some reason, drove it into the ground, and after all these years I was able to hold it in my hands.”

Measuring nearly two feet long, the sword dates to between roughly 900 and 700 B.C.E., according to a statement from the Provincial Office for the Protection of Monuments (PUOZ). At that time, it was likely quite valuable. Experts think that it once featured a handle made from organic materials like wood or bone. The handle hasn’t survived, but the engraved patterns decorating the blade are still visible.

The sword’s upright position is unusual. Other examples have been found in Europe, but they’re quite rare, as Dawid Sych, a scholar of metalwork wear analysis at the University of Leicester in England, tells Archeologia Żywa’s Radosław Biel. The reason the sword was buried in this position is unclear.

Similar artifacts have been discovered in the region. In the 1920s, two bronze antenna swords—named for the “pair of ornaments on their hilt,” per Notes From Poland’s Ben Koschalka—were found in a peat bog. They were acquired by the Provincial Museum in Gdańsk but went missing during World War II.

Marcin Tymiński, a spokesperson for PUOZ, tells Fox News Digital’s Andrea Margolis that the newly discovered sword will go to a museum, though officials haven’t yet decided which one. He adds that more information about the artifact will be released after experts are able to study it.

Wiśniewski, an avid metal detectorist, has discovered other exciting artifacts before, including necklaces and a bracelet from the eighth century B.C.E. On the day he found the sword, he was preparing for five weeks of travel, and he was eager to squeeze in some treasure hunting before being separated from his metal detector.

Several other historic swords have surfaced elsewhere in the country in recent years. In 2025, metal detectorists unearthed a nearly 2,000-year-old Roman sword in a forest in southern Poland. The artifact appeared to have been burned, and researchers think it may have been used in a funerary ritual.

In 2024, construction workers stumbled across a tenth-century sword while dredging the Vistula River. Scans detected an inscription on the weapon’s blade that read “U[V]LFBERTH,” a word that has been found on more than 150 other medieval swords. Its exact meaning is a mystery, though experts think it may be a Frankish name.

Ellen Wexler | | Read More

Ellen Wexler is a staff writer and special projects editor, digital, for Smithsonian magazine.