After 1,200 years, the shattered fragments of a rare Viking sword were brought back together

 The hilt of the sword is intricately embellished with gold and silver work.

After being separated for almost 1,200 years, two sections of an intricate Viking sword have been reunited and have been shown to still fit together like pieces of a puzzle. In Norway, amateur treasure hunters found the scraps one after the other for over a year.

A metal detectorist in Stavanger, located along Norway's west coast, came up with a little and peculiar bit of metal while searching a farm last year. This was the first discovery of its kind. The man gave the piece to the museum of archaeology in the area, but he did not know what it was until this spring when his friend and a fellow metal detectorist discovered the rest of the relic nearby. It turns out that the two tiny pieces of metal were a piece of a gigantic sword that was used during the Viking Age.

An archaeologist from the University of Oslo in Norway named Ann Zanette Glrstad told Live Science in an email that the sword is "of a rare type, known from Scandinavia but also found in Western Europe (in the countries known today as France, Britain, and Ireland), and Eastern Europe, e.g., Hungary." The sword's hilt is intricately carved and elaborately ornamented with details made of gold and silver, even though the blade has been lost. At each end of the cross-guard is a shape that resembles an animal that cannot be named.

Glrstad believes that the sword was crafted around 800 A.D. in the Frankish Empire of England. His reasoning is based on the ornamentation on the blade. She did point out that it's possible that it was crafted by a skilled Norwegian smith who was motivated to create it by the weapons of the Franks. Only about 20 of the approximately 3,000 Viking swords found in Norway match the profile of the recently discovered blade, and the identity of its owner is still unknown.

When asked who owned it, Glrstad responded, "We can only surmise as to who it belonged to." "However, it was a highly ornate and impressive sword, and it must have belonged to someone who had the resources to buy it as well as someone who desired to demonstrate their social rank," the author writes.

According to the Art Institute of Chicago, owners of swords from this period sometimes had their names engraved on the blades of their weapons. However, the blade of this particular weapon has been lost, so archaeologists will have to rely on other evidence to determine who the owner of this sword was.

The region was home to more than its fair share of Viking nobility; in 1883, the burial site of a wealthy Viking queen was uncovered not too far from the location where the sword was found. "We were aware that this region was of particular significance; yet, the discovery of something like this was completely unexpected!" In a statement that was translated, Hkon Reiersen, the acting head of the collection section of the museum, said the following: . The sword has been added to the Stavanger Museum of Archaeology collection. Once it has undergone the necessary conservation and restoration work, it will be displayed there. Archaeology fans interested in receiving information regarding the restoration of the sword can visit the museum's website and its Instagram and Facebook pages, respectively.

Article source : https://www.livescience.com/rare-viking-sword-discovered-norway