(Kitco News) - It’s not often that you get a chance to find a cache of ancient coins twice in your lifetime, but that is exactly what happened to some brothers in Norway; adding a twist to the story, the same cache was discovered twice.
The adventure started 60 years ago; Jan Gunnar Fugelsnes and his brother were digging under their local church, hunting for treasure in 1964. The two boys uncovered 14 silver coins.
Images courtesy of Carl-Fredrik Wahr-Hansen Vemmestad /Møre og Romsdal County Municipality
Although the brothers didn’t know what they had, the coins were carefully kept in a small yellow Kodak slide box and forgotten about until Fugelsnes came across them last November.
Fugelsnes, who still lives in the area, handed the cache of coins to authorities in the Møre og Romsdal county in Northwestern Norway.
"We were just children on a treasure hunt under the church; we didn't realize how rare the coins were," Fugelsnes said in a statement released by the county. "In addition, we found three fittings, an amber pearl and nine needles that day."
Carl-Fredrik Wahr-Hansen Vemmestad, the archaeologist for Møre og Romsdal, said that some of the coins are about 600 years old and are incredibly rare artifacts.
According to the researchers, some of the coins may have originated from the reign of Magnus VI, the King of Norway until 1280. A "newer" coin in the collection dates to the reign of Christian I, who ruled Norway from 1450 to 1481.
“The discovery site and the composition of coins and objects suggest that they may originate from a burial mound that was placed under the church floor in the Middle Ages, between approx. 1200-1300," Vemmestad said. "Elsewhere in Central Norway, there are literally only a handful of such coins that have survived to our time. The coins give a unique insight into the Middle Ages in Edøy."
Meanwhile, the needles are believed to all come from the 13th century and may have been part of the clothing of a corpse. The amber bead is believed to be part of a prayer crown.
