In a bog northwest of Copenhagen in Denmark, a local resident, using a metal detector, made an astonishing discovery. Indeed, he unearthed an S-shaped sword which would have been used in sacrificial rituals 2500 years ago.
A sword and other artifacts
Following his discovery, the man who made the discovery immediately called on ROMU (Roskilde Museum), a collection of 10 Danish museums. From there, teams of archaeologists took over to organize excavations in the Veskø bog.
And in what Emil Winther, the supervisor of the excavations, considers “a very rare discovery” in a press release from ROMU, archaeologists were able to examine much more than a sword with a particular shape.
© ROME The sword found in the Veskø bog in Denmark
Indeed, in addition to the sword rendered unusable for combat, the researchers got their hands on bronze axes, ankle rings, a possible fragment of needles as well as a necklace. The latter is, according to archaeologists, only the second of the type found in Denmark.
A special ritual
The fact that the discovery of the sword was made in a bog tipped the researchers off. So, for them, the curved blade as well as the other artifacts found there could have been used in one of the many sacrificial rituals that could have taken place in this particular environment.
Indeed, researchers explain that it was customary at the beginning and middle of the Bronze Age to place such objects (swords, axes, necklaces, rings, etc.) as sacrifices. However, the bog was not only used to make objects disappear and offer them to the gods. The particular configuration of this ecosystem also made it possible to make bodies disappear.
Thus, numerous human sacrifices, but also murders took place in the peat bogs, and not only with a sword since the practice of making bodies disappear in the peat bog was preserved until the 19th century.
A blade showing the passage from one Age to another
By studying the sword more closely, which was surely very functional before taking this particular form, archaeologists noticed that it incorporated two iron rivets.
In the ROMU press release, it is said that it could be “of a physical manifestation of the transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age”. Furthermore, the sword probably did not come from Denmark but from parts a little further south of Europe dominated by the Hallstatt culture which had spread across the Old Continent between -1200 and -450.
Source : ROMU / LiveScience
