The recently found hoards from Spillings farm on Gotland, Sweden

Gotland is rich in historical remains and traces from times long ago. Throughout the years many artefacts from our past have been found on the island. Especially remarkable are the large amounts of silver that have been found here, for example more English coins have been found on the tiny island of Gotland than in England itself.

One of the more, if not the most, spectacular phenomena is the large, or even huge, amount of silver hoards that have been found in different parts of Gotland. In fact, more than seven hundred silver hoards have been found on the island. And that figure only takes into account the hoards that have been registered in modern times.

Most of the hoards have been found when farming, during road construction and other more or less scientific ways. In the early summer of 1999 the biggest hoard so far was found at Spillings farm in Othem parish, situated in the Northeastern part of Gotland. Personnel from the Gotland Fornsal Museum in Visby found the hoard with a metal detector after the landowner had brought the archaeologists' attention to the place.

While working with the metal detector in a field near the Spillings farm the metal detector gave a sharp signal and when placed closer to object beneath the surface of the soil Jonas Ström, who is an expert in the use of such detectors, noted a new observation. The display on the metal detector showed the sign "overload", a clear indication that this find was something out of the "ordinary".

When archaeologists had started working on the excavation of the find, the work with the metal detector continued and once again its display showed the "overload" sign! This was only 3 meters from the first one, but the ground at Spillings had even more to give to the archaeologists. Only 1 m from the second silver hoard the metal detector indicated another large find. A hoard containing bronze objects was revealed; most of them destroyed, cut or burnt, pieces or bronze artefacts. Some of it was melted together in a big chunk of melted bronze. It is considered to be a scrap metal deposit. It seems like a chest of bronzes exported from the Baltic countries of Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia to Gotland, probably meant to be melted down and remade into a more local type of jewellery.

Hoard 1

Two silver hoards of this size within three meters of each other must be seen as something extraordinary, even on Gotland! The first hoard, hereafter hoard 1, measured 40x50 cm on the surface. In the first layers of hoard 1 we found Arabic coins, bracelets, arm-rings and bars all made out of silver. Hoard 1 was excavated at the site and the work was problematic when the silver in the hoard had been exposed to a chemical process, which coloured the surface of the objects purple and made them fragile. The bracelets were twisted into each other and in some cases it seems that they have been put together in certain weights to correspond to a weight system used during the Viking Age. A proper English term for this is "Ringmoney". This term that does not exist in Swedish, but most definitely should! The majority of the coins in hoard 1 were found in the bottom placed in a small wooden chest. This was also taken in for closer examination in the laboratory at the museum. The coins have not yet been counted due to the chemical process but there are approximately between 3000 and 4000 silver coins. All of them are Arabic dirhems. The shrine the coins were placed in measures approximately 17x18 cm. The total weight of hoard 1 is about 25 kg.

Hoard 2

Hoard 2 was not exposed to the same aggressive chemical process as hoard 1 and was removed as a mass for excavation in the laboratory where it could be examined carefully. Preparation of a silver hoard this size had never before been done on Gotland. Everything went well except that a stone obstructed the metal plate used to slide under the hoard before lifting it up from the ground. After overcoming that minor problem the hoard was taken indoors and the examination could begin.

This hoard was investigated from the bottom. The second hoard showed to be even bigger then hoard 1 and not only that, the objects were in better condition. In hoard nr. 2, 312 arm-rings, 20 bars, 30 bracelets, 20 finger-rings and approximately 14,300 silver coins were found. The majority were Arabic coins from the Sassanidian dynasty from the mid-7th century, Ummajadian coins from the 8th century and Abbasidian coins from the 9th century. The TPQ, the youngest coins in the hoards are dated to 866-867. That is also is the preliminary dating for the deposition of the hoard/ hoards. Johan Landgren, the numismatic who will continue his work with the hoards from Spillings in the future, made this dating. Therefore I want to remind readers that this is a still preliminary figure. The few coins that are not Arabic are a coin from the Byzatine Empire struck for Basileos I at 867, and two other so-called Hedeby coins minted around 825. Most of the coins have not yet been fully examined, but Johan Landgren has browsed through them and divided them into groups of younger and older coins. The youngest group has been examined pretty carefully explaining why its estimated age is considered as a probable date. The total weight of hoard 2 is about 40 kg.

Silver hoards

Silver hoards have traditionally been interpreted as having been buried in the ground during violent times and then forgotten. The general interpretation is that the silver has been hidden in the ground within the farm property, mainly within a building. Too few larger archaeological investigations have been made at the places where silver was found and the question of where the silver was kept during the Viking Age has never had received a proper answer.

When the silver was removed from the ground only the small area of the hoard itself was excavated or salvaged and the area around was hardly ever investigated. This is mainly due to the costs involved with the necessary archaeological excavations. The main question discussed was why the hoards were hidden and also what the reason was for the large amount of silver found on Gotland. The silver hoards mostly contain silver coins but also bracelets, finger-rings, brooches, pieces of silver and rarely gold coins. The coins in the hoards dated before 970 are mostly of eastern origin and those after 970 are of western origin, mainly from England and Germany.

1977 a project, named The Hoard Project, with the main purpose of investigating the places where silver hoards have been found, began on Gotland. The silver itself has been the object of many studies but the sites where it was found have never undergone any deeper scientific studies, with the exception of Majvor Östergren's research "Mellan stengrund och stenhus" from 1989 that singles itself out in this field of work.

The project undertook new investigations in the places were the hoards have been found both from archive studies and with the help of metal detectors and archaeological excavations. Another reason for starting the project was also to excavate the sites before people with less scientific motives did. The plundering and looting of historical monuments was, and still is, a big problem on Gotland and of course the silver hoards are the object of special interest for looters. In the early nineties the Swedish government passed a law restricting the use of all metal detectors in Sweden.

With new excavations at sites where silver hoards have been found, archaeologists wanted to study the link between the silver hoards and settlements from the same time. On Gotland many settlements from the early Iron Age (up to 500 AD) are visible in the landscape because of the stones used to build the walls. In the younger phase of the Iron Age houses were made of wood, making settlements from that era hard to find. In the end of the 1960's Lena Thunmark and Gustav Trotzig carried out the first larger excavation at Burge in Lummelunda where a silver hoard had been found during cultivation in 1967. Their excavations showed that the hoard had been placed inside the walls of a house (Thunmark & Trotzig 1971: 97).

Later excavations at sites where silver hoards have been found provide us with archaeological information showing a similar pattern to the Burge investigation. Silver hoards seem to be connected with settlements from the same period. Materials found at the sites are of typical settlement character, ceramics, nails, bones and postholes.

Bronze hoards

Hoarding as a phenomenon in archaeological material is well worth a discussion, as it seems to appear all over but there is little known about it. Hoards might consist of iron, bronze, silver or gold; valuable goods from the specific period in any case. They might be hidden from enemies or placed in pattern to create a territorial borderline, or they might be seen as ceremonial offers, as gifts to gods for religious purposes. On Gotland, as mentioned earlier, more than 700 silver hoards have been found. One or more are added to this number every year. Bronze hoards are more rare. The number of bronze hoards is uncertain but if not correct, one more or less, this is the fifth found on Gotland. Therefore perhaps this hoard has been slightly neglected in the way not only the media but also we, the archaeologists have presented the major find from Spillings farm. This find is not as large, not as valuable today and not as glimmering as the polished silver, but still, it can provide us with archaeological facts that will increase our knowledge about trade in a way "another" silver hoard cannot. This is not meant to be patronising but, while more silver hoards provide more factual information, a rare find results in more new knowledge and equally important- it arouses more questions.

In this short description we will focus on the hoards from Spillings.

The bronze hoard was found only 1 meter from silver hoard 2. The hoard contained dress-pins, arm- and neck-rings, bracelets, mountings and pieces of melted bronze. Most of the objects were destroyed, cut in pieces or half melted. Perhaps destroyed by fire would be an appropriate expression. Indubitable evidence of wood and large iron-mountings showed that the bronze had been kept in some kind of a wooden container.

Judging from the iron-mountings the container was a chest. During the excavation well-preserved pieces of a solid lock for the chest appeared. Many of the bronze pieces had been exposed to a high temperature and a big chunk of bronze artefacts was melted together at the bottom of the hoard. The bronze hoard can be seen as raw material for bronze casting. The bronze objects that were found were all of Baltic type. At the moment nothing specific can be said regarding the dating of the objects. Hopefully a planned Swedish-Baltic project, still in an early phase, will be able to provide some vital answers concerning dating the hoard and the objects within it. An answer from the radiocarbon dating laboratory is expected soon.

The weight of the bronze hoard was approximately 20 kg.

All these three hoards seem to have been hidden within a building; all three within the same building shown in the picture to the right. The line in the lower right hand corner measuring 10 meters indicates the scale. North is upwards as a small arrow above the big trench shows. The smaller squares are test pits. The eastern one, in the top right corner, showed traces from a house, with an easily recognisable clay floor level. In that one we also found a great deal of ceramics and animal bones. We have tried to show the situation of the house with the dotted line in the picture. The dark areas within the trench are areas with stones and darker soil. Wooden remains probably belonging to a roof were found and laboratory results will indicate if the hoards and the building belong to the same time period. This and other questions will hopefully be answered when test results arrive and other analyses are all done.

Thunmark, L & Trotzig, G. 1971. Burge i Lummelunda. Ett forskningsprojekt. Gotländskt Arkiv. Visby.

Östergren, M. 1989. Mellan stengrund och stenhus. Gotlands vikingatida silverskatter som boplatsindikation. Theses and papers in archaeology 2. Visby.

E-mail: per.widerstrom@gotmus.i.se

Bildtext: Photo: Göran Ström