If you want to know anything about the Viking Age, Ribe, in west Jutland, Denmark, is the place to go. Archeologists have recently made some of the most esceptional archeological finds in Danish history there. Read more about the exceptional Viking Finds in Denmark’s Oldest Town
An excavation in Ribe, carried out by a team of Danish archaeologists from Aarhus University in cooperation with Southwest Jutland Museum, has unearthed many Viking treasures, including coins, bits of amber, glass beads, fragments of glass vessels, pieces of bronze and parts of crucibles used for melting metal. The archaeologists uncovered 248 coins that are believed to have been minted over 1,000 years ago – way back in the early 9th century.
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Exceptional Viking Finds in Denmark’s Oldest Town
The excavation in the Viking city is a part of the ongoing Northern Emporium Project. Among the finds was fragments of a comb which had several lines etched into it, spelling out a word in runes, the ancient Viking alphabet.
Also, the finding of 235 coins is unique because only ten such coins have been found worldwide until now. “This is an exceptional find that means a quantum leap in our understanding of minting. They are Danish coins and clearly minted for the purpose of being implemented in Ribe,” according to the curator of the Museum of Southwest Jutland, Claus Feveile.
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A city emerges
The discovering of a lyre (a harp-like stringed instrument), complete with tuning pegs alone gives the Viking trading city of Ribe a whole new soundtrack. The runic inscriptions in the comb indicates that a significant proportion of the population in the Viking Age could read and write, according to Gareth Williams, a Viking specialist from the British Museum.
What makes Ribe special is that this is where a city emerged. The people who lived here weren’t primarily farmers for household purposes but craftsmen, seafarers, tradesmen, innkeepers, and maybe even lyrists.
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Exceptional Viking Finds in Denmark’s Oldest Town, written by Tor Kjolberg