Huge Iron Age weapon offering found in Denmark –

An archaeological excavation near Hedensted, Denmark, has uncovered a large number of well-preserved Iron Age weapon offerings. Nearly 200 items were unearthed, including 119 spears and lances, eight swords, five knives, three arrowheads, an axe, a horsebit and an extremely rare chainmail shirt. Weapon sacrifices date back to the fifth century, a time of ongoing conflict among Germanic tribes.

A team from the Vejle Museum made the discovery in August this year while surveying the site for a planned motorway expansion at Løsning Søndermark. The weapons were sacrificed not in a swamp or a cemetery, but in two houses of the settlement. A deposit was paid after the house was demolished. The load-bearing corner posts were removed and the holes filled with weapons. Another deposit showed the opposite: During construction, weapons were stacked around load-bearing columns.

Deliberate placement in sentry pits before and after use suggests that these weapons could not have been part of a workshop inventory or barracks armory. Archaeologists believe the weapons were deposited as a protective ritual at the residence of a warlord or community chief, or at least someone who commanded a large number of armed men. More research on these weapons is necessary to determine if they were locally owned or if they were trophies taken from defeated enemies, but archaeologists currently prefer to believe they were trophies. Other sites with large numbers of weapon sacrifices, such as those found at Ilerup Adal, were the repositories of booty taken after victory on the battlefield.

In addition to the weapons, archaeologists also found parts of two bronze neck rings. The circular cross-section, with large bronze beads distributed along their length, indicates that they were oath rings, a symbol of power and influence in the Iron Age of Northern Europe. The image of the ring bearer holding the oath ring aloft in one hand is often depicted on a golden bract, as in the Vendeleev Treasure. The ring bearer on the Vindelev hoard also wears a high-collared garment with textured scales, likely representing a chain mail tunic, like those found in the Løsning Søndermark excavations.

The piece of mail is one of 14 known from Denmark and the only one found in a settlement rather than in a cemetery. Chain mail shirts like this were expensive and laborious to make and were worn only by elite war leaders. Discarding it, even as an offering to a god, would be a tremendous display of wealth and power, and the sheer number of weapons in the offering suggests that a warlord was able to amass, equip, and/or defeat an army of approximately 80 soldiers and Ten officers.

Large weapons are rarely found in buildings. The vast majority of these come from bog or funerary environments, making the site a unique source of information about the social structure of Iron Age villages in the outskirts of the declining Roman Empire, namely the power and wealth of its warrior elite.