Boys found rare silver treasure under church, kept it in box for 60 years — until now
A pair of boys decided to go treasure hunting in Norway. They figured the local church was a good spot to search and crawled underneath the building. Buried in the dirt, the boys discovered several silver coins.
That was in 1964.
Jan Gunnar Fugelsnes said he and his brother didn’t realize the significance of their find at the time. But treasure was treasure, so they packed the coins in a box and kept them.
Sixty years later, archaeologists got their first look at the boys’ find, Møre and Romsdal County Municipality said in a March 6 news release. Fugelsnes still lives in the area and told archaeologists about the coins after investigations began at the Edøy church where the boys found the treasures.
The set of 14 silver coins turned out to be incredibly rare, 600-year-old artifacts, archaeologist Carl Fredrik Wahr-Hansen Vemmestad.
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Most coins dated from the 1300s to 1350s, but one coin dated between 1450 and 1481, officials said. Several coins were marked with crowns.
Only a handful of these types of coins have ever been found in central Norway, Vemmestad said in the release. The age and location of the coins suggests they were part of a burial mound under the Edøy church in the Middle Ages.
The area beneath the church had been dug out by German troops and used for ammunition storage during World War II, officials said.
Fugelsnes and his brother also found nine needles, three metal fittings and an amber pearl under the church, he told researchers.
Archaeologists identified the bead as part of a prayer wreath and the 700-year-old needles as part of the deceased’s clothing.
Sixty-seven-year-old Fugelsnes gave the rare coins to archaeologists, the Norwegian outlet NRK reported. The artifacts were sent to a museum for further analysis.
Edøya is an island in Møre and Romsdal county and about 250 miles northwest of Oslo.
Google Translate was used to translate the news release from Møre and Romsdal County Municipality and article from NRK.
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