Tobias Bondesson has kindly sent me photographs of several interesting finds, taken during our recent fieldwork with the heavy dudes of the Gothenburg Historical Society. With his permission, I've inserted them into the relevant blog entries:
- Fieldwork in Hov and Vretakloster
- Fieldwork in Tingstad and Ãstra Husby
- Fieldwork in Kimstad and Kaga
Tobias has also opened my eyes to Nordisk Detektorforum, an on-line discussion forum and image database for (mainly Danish) detectorists. These guys are responsible, keen and hugely knowledgeable. One user, for instance, identified a coin we found as struck for a 12th century Archbishop of Cologne, but another one made a suggestion that seems more likely, viz that we're dealing with the last or second-to-last Count of Katlenburg in the later 11th century.
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Polyhedrical weight. 9/10th century. Photograph Tobias Bondesson.
(Martin here, posting from the hostel of Norsholm on the Göta canal, using my handheld and the cell phone network. To get the post on-line, my dear scibling Janet has kindly agreed to act as go-between.)
Coin struck for Heinrich…
Frag of a lion-shaped badge with a rivet used to fix it to some surface. Photograph Tobias Bondesson.
Another day of fruitful fieldwork, with friendly landowners and pretty good weather. We started out with 20 man-hours in the fields around a fortified hilltop settlement in Tingstad parish. The…
Frag of a brooch decorated with embossed silver foil. 5th century. Photograph Tobias Bondesson.
Our site in Kimstad parish looked even better than I'd thought. This was one of many cases where I've come swooping in to sites that I've never visited before and directed metal detecting. In Kimstad, I…
This entry was first published over the cell-phone network on my old site, without pix, on Thursday 12 April.
This morning we wrapped up our 20 person-hours in Varv, joined by regular Dear Reader Lars Lundqvist. The weather was great, but we found nothing older than the 11th century. A fragment of…
Very nice finds!! And good pics! Do you know what sort of aristocracy this finds represent? Are they conected to the royal families or noblemen or what?
We haven't got enough sites to sort them into levels like "noblemen" vs. "royals" etc. But our site in Kaga has metalworking, a gold-foil figure die, fine copper-alloy jewellery, a Tuna place name and a great barrow. So to me it looks like a top-level site of the later 6th century. No solidi or other gold that would indicate a similar status in the 5th century, but then, there are no solidi whatsoever from Ãstergötland.
Wasn´t some early medieval kings from Kaga?
Indeed. The Sverker dynasty, whose first Swedish king Sverker I was elected in 1130, had a power base (part of a huge land estate for which only tantalising bits of documentation survives) in Kaga. Sverker I was king of Ãstergötland for some time before 1130. But my project treats an earlier period.