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Pre-Viking hoard goes to Denmark museum

 

If you've wondered about life in Scandinavia before the Vikings, more answers are coming your way with preparations by a museum in western Denmark to show off a cache of 22 coins with inscriptions from the 4th through 6th centuries.

Uncovered by an amateur archaeologist, they will be displayed at the Vejle museums. Mads Ravn, research director of the museums, told AFP that “It is the symbols on the items that makes them unique, more than the quantity found.”

The one-kilo trove includes coins with runic inscriptions that could refer either to local rulers or to Norse mythology; those are dated to the 6th century. A 4th century coin bears an inscription of the Roman emperor Constantine, documenting a far-reaching trade.

Ravn said that “They have many symbols, some of which have not been seen before, which will enable us to enlarge our knowledge of the people of this period.” It is speculated they might have been cached as an offering around 536 AD, after the area was covered in an ash cloud from a volcanic eruption in Iceland.

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