The Duesminde Hoard

In 2002 an amateur archaeologist searching a field at Duesminde, south-west of Maribo on the Danish island of Lolland, began picking up pieces of ornate silver. The hoard had been struck by a plough at some point in recent times, and its parts lay spread over an area about ten by fifteen metres. Gathered together, they came to roughly fifty pieces weighing about 1.3 kg. The same field had already produced a different hoard forty years earlier: 23 spiral silver rings, probably from the Volga region, and a gold ring, found in 1962-65.

What came up in 2002 was not the usual Viking mix of coins and chopped silver. It was almost entirely Frankish metalwork: buckles, strap mounts and strap ends of silver, many of them gilded, from elaborate belts and at least one fine sword belt. The National Museum of Denmark notes that such fittings had never been found in such concentration anywhere in Europe. Most were made in the Carolingian empire between about 820 and 870, the generation of the great Viking raids on Frankia. Among them is a fragment of a key of a type used in church ceremonies.

That combination has led to the obvious suspicion that some of this silver was taken from a Frankish church or monastery, or formed part of the tribute and ransoms that Frankish rulers paid to Viking armies in the mid-ninth century. Nobody can prove how it reached Lolland. A war-band returning with booty is one explanation; the National Museum also allows that the hoard may have belonged to a rich man safeguarding his wealth, or to a silversmith or travelling trader keeping metal for reuse.

Not everything is Frankish. Some fittings and pendants carry animal ornament in Scandinavian style and were made between about 850 and 950. Their presence means the hoard was put together over time and buried no earlier than the middle of the tenth century, generations after most of the Frankish pieces were made. By then the belt fittings may have been treasured heirlooms, or simply silver waiting to be melted.

Duesminde is one of the clearest physical traces in Denmark of the Viking age's dealings with the Continent, whether by raid, ransom or trade. Because it was reported and recorded, its scattered pieces could be mapped and reunited, and the mixture of Frankish and Nordic work in one deposit shows how foreign treasure was absorbed into Scandinavian wealth over several generations.