The Vindelev Hoard

On a cold December day in 2020 two metal detectorists searching a field at Vindelev, about eight kilometres north-east of Jelling in eastern Jutland, began finding thin discs of gold just below the surface. They reported the find, and archaeologists from Vejle Museums and the National Museum of Denmark recovered 23 gold objects weighing just under 800 grams. Most lay within two small patches a few metres apart; ploughing had dragged a few of the largest pieces further and torn one bracteate into three parts found as much as 90 metres apart.

The bulk of the hoard is bracteates, the stamped gold pendants that Scandinavians made in imitation of Roman imperial medallions in the 5th and 6th centuries. Vindelev's are exceptional in size and finish. One, catalogued as X10, measures 13.8 centimetres across and weighs 123.7 grams, the largest bracteate known; four others rank among the ten largest. They have elaborate loops and several concentric bands of stamped decoration, and some had been folded or rolled up before burial. Specialists used CT scanning to unfold them digitally and read their designs.

Alongside the bracteates were four Roman gold solidi of Constantine I, Constans, Valentinian I and Gratian, each fitted with a decorated frame and loop to be worn as a pendant, and the gold filigree mouthpiece of a sword scabbard. A close parallel for the frame on the Valentinian coin has been identified on a coin from a hoard in Poland, suggesting the same workshop outside the empire and a long chain of gift exchange.

Many of the bracteates carry runic inscriptions. In 2023 runologists at the National Museum published a reading of the text on bracteate X13 that includes the phrase 'he is Wodan's man', which they argue is the earliest known reference to the god Odin, older than the inscription on a 6th-century brooch from Nordendorf in Germany that previously held that place. The reading, and the idea that the crowned heads on bracteates show human rulers rather than gods, are still debated.

Excavations in 2021 found about 840 postholes from a group of buildings, including a large longhouse within which the gold had been buried, and radiocarbon dates showed the buildings and the deposit belong to the same period. The archaeologists interpret the site as a chieftain's residence a few kilometres from Jelling, where Danish kings were buried four centuries later. Why the gold went into the ground is unknown. It may have been hidden in a time of war, or offered to the gods during the crisis that followed the volcanic eruptions of around 536, when crops failed for several years; one theory links many 6th-century Scandinavian gold hoards to that disaster.