Metal detectorists have unearthed a long, bronze sword that was bent into an S shape during an ancient ritual in what is now Denmark.
The sword and other artifacts — found in a bog near Vexø, northwest of Copenhagen — date to about 2,500 years ago, during the late Bronze Age. They are believed to have been part of a ritual sacrifice, although the practice was not common at the time. After discovering the artifacts, metal detectorists notified Danish museum group ROMU.
“This is a very rare find,” excavation leader Emil Winther Struve, an archaeologist and curator at ROMU, said in a translated statement.
Although such objects were often deposited in bogs as sacrificial offerings during the early and middle Bronze Age in northern Europe, “we don’t know much from the late Bronze Age,” he added. However, the practice of sacrificing or killing people in bogs — leaving behind remains known as “bog bodies” — spans a long period of time, from the Stone Age to the 19th century.
Ritual sacrifice
In addition to the bent sword, archaeologists also found other Bronze Age artifacts, including two small, bronze axes; several large, bronze “ankle rings”; and what may have been a fragment of a needle, according to the statement.
A few days later, archaeologists also discovered a large, bronze “neck ring” 230 feet (70 meters) away. The neck ring is the second ring of its kind found in Denmark, and archaeologists think from its style that it was imported from the Baltic coast of present-day Poland.
The bronze sword handle has two iron nails that may be the oldest iron nails ever found in Denmark. The ROMU statement describes the sword as “almost a physical manifestation of the transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age.”
The sword’s design suggests it was not made in Denmark, but in the southern parts of Europe, where the Hallstatt culture dominated during the Bronze Age, the statement said. The Hallstatt culture flourished from the eighth to the sixth centuries B.C. and was influenced by Europe’s early Celtic culture.
The ritually bent sword was a real weapon and marked a change from more lightweight swords used primarily for stabbing, Struve said, “But now they are getting harder, more solid and of a different weight, so you can use them in a more violent way and for cutting.”
The Hallstatt culture had an ideal of a warrior who sought conquest, war and conflict. “The sword is probably an image of that,” Struve said.