Cool Finds

Routine Yard Work Reveals a Trove of Viking Silver—the Largest Treasure of Its Kind Ever Discovered in Denmark

The collection includes coins, jewelry, silver bars and a tiny artifact shaped like Thor’s hammer. Experts say the roughly 700 items were buried during the tenth century

Sonja Anderson | Daily Correspondent

September 8, 2026 8:00 a.m.

Share

Copy linkEmailSMSFacebookXRedditLinkedInBlueskyPrint

Add as preferred source

When a resident of northern Denmark started clearing their backyard, the plan was to install a new terrace. They expected a few hours of hard work. But after half an hour of digging, they came across something metallic: a trove of jewelry and coins.

Located in the municipality of Rebild, the backyard revealed the largest hoard of Viking silver ever discovered in Denmark. According to a statement from North Jutland Museums, the treasure includes roughly 700 artifacts and weighs more than 40 pounds. Experts think these items were buried in the tenth century.

“This is an exceptionally important Viking Age silver hoard,” archaeologist Torben Sarauw, head of cultural heritage at North Jutland Museums, tells the Art Newspaper’s Hadani Ditmars. “It provides a rare insight into the Viking Age silver economy, where silver functioned not only as coinage but also as weighed bullion used for trade, payments and storing wealth.”

About 320 objects were found inside a pottery vessel, while the others were scattered nearby. The trove includes bracelets, 47 coins and coin fragments, silver bars, and a small object in the shape of Thor’s hammer.

According to the National Museum of Denmark, silver was “the most important precious metal of the Viking Age,” which spanned from roughly 800 to 1050. During this period, silver objects like bars and jewelry were often valued by weight and used for payment, per the statement.

The Viking Age is “often described as an ‘age of silver,’” Jane Kershaw, an archaeologist at the University of Oxford, wrote in the Conversation in 2025. “This form of wealth was so desired that its acquisition was a primary driver of the expansion out of Scandinavia that the Vikings are most famed for. To acquire it, they were prepared to risk their own lives—and take those of many others.”

Two of the coins in the hoard are silver pennies minted under King Edward the Elder, who ruled in England between 899 and 924. Other coins, known as dirhams, are marked with Arabic inscriptions. As Sarauw explains in the statement, they shed light on the Vikings’ connections to the east.

One of the silver bars is engraved with runes that might say “hutu,” perhaps a name or mark of ownership. The hammer, meanwhile, is linked to Thor, the god of thunder in Norse mythology. The Vikings were known to create and wear amulets shaped like Thor’s hammer.

For those who wore them, amulets of this kind may have been associated with safety. “It’s protecting you, in a very positive way,” Carolyne Larrington, a scholar of medieval European literature at the University of Oxford, told Live Science’s Tom Metcalfe in 2022.

The newly discovered hoard features an impressive number of silver bars. They’re grouped by weight, indicating that the treasure had been deliberately organized based on each item’s value. In the statement, Sarauw compares the trove to a Viking-era safe.

The Rebild hoard easily surpasses Denmark’s second-largest collection of Viking silver, a 14.5-pound assortment called Terslevskat, which is on display at the National Museum. Per the statement, North Jutland Museums is hoping to eventually exhibit the Rebild artifacts at the Fyrkat Viking Museum. Researchers aren’t sure why someone buried these items at this particular spot.

“It was buried during the period when the Danish kingdom was taking shape and Christianity was spreading across Scandinavia,” Sarauw tells the Art Newspaper. “As well as illuminating Viking Age trade and wealth, the hoard provides evidence of a society undergoing profound political and religious change.”

Sonja Anderson is a daily correspondent for Smithsonian magazine who covers art, archaeology and culture, from newly discovered artifacts to the latest art heists.