SAEDNEWS: A priceless treasure buried for decades in a home’s basement was uncovered during spring cleaning.
A large collection of thousand-year-old iron ingots, hidden for 40 years in the basement of a Norwegian house, was recently discovered by a family member while tidying up the home.
The set includes 32 iron pieces, each resembling small spatulas, dating back to either the Viking Age (793–1066 CE) or the early Middle Ages (1066–1350 CE). All the ingots are similarly shaped and weigh about 50 grams each. Archaeologists believe these iron pieces may have served as a form of currency, and that their owner buried them with the hope of retrieving them later.
Each ingot has a small hole at one end, which experts say indicates they were once bound together in a secure bundle.
While similar iron objects have been preserved in museums, discoveries like this are rare, as modern construction often destroys buried treasures.
The woman who found the ingots recalls that her father originally uncovered the treasure in the 1980s while digging a well, but had set the pieces aside and forgotten about them.
