from Hacker News

Denmark's Archaeology Experiment Is Paying Off in Gold and Knowledge

by sohkamyung on 6/18/25, 12:13 PM with 106 comments

  • by comrade1234 on 6/22/25, 12:19 AM

    I live in Switzerland and I know an ancient forest where I go every year and pull out about 20kg of chanterelle and 10kg of toten trumpeten. These mushrooms come back every year, potentially for thousands of years.

    One year I found a big piece of a clay cooking pan in the area where the chanterelles grow.

    There are also tons of ravines, potential caves but I won't know until I climb down the ravines, but about 20 km away there are tourist caves where you can pay to enter them, part of the same ridge system.

    I wanted to see if I could use a metal detector to find treasure, like in the article but it's illegal here. I suppose I could go in at night with the equipment but it's probably not worth it since while the Roman's were very active in Switzerland they weren't in this very specific region.

    But still, where did the clay cooking pan come from?

  • by countrymile on 6/21/25, 7:41 PM

    For anyone who hasn't seen the detectorists, it gives a very British perspective on this sort of work, and is one of the best British comedies of the last ten years: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detectorists

  • by BurningFrog on 6/21/25, 8:32 PM

    Impressed that people turned in "1.5 kilograms of Viking Age gold artifacts".

    That gold is worth about $160k!

    If I ran the program I would pay at least the metal value to anyone turning artifacts in. To remove the temptation that doubtless keeps some finds away from the science.

  • by wslh on 6/21/25, 7:30 PM

  • by biophysboy on 6/21/25, 10:07 PM

    Denmark has a fantastic maritime museum right by the Kronborg castle with hundreds of model ships, wreckage artifacts and high-quality underwater photos. Would recommend visiting on a Copenhagen trip

  • by erk__ on 6/22/25, 9:50 AM

    There is also a version of Danefæ for non-human made things called Danekræ

    https://samlinger.snm.ku.dk/en/danekrae/

    There is a lot less specimens in that collection as it only includes specimens that are deemed important in some ways, right now there are 1054.

    They can be viewed online here: https://collections.snm.ku.dk/en/search?dataset=5b5305ae-35d...

    (edit: That online collection only seem to contain biological specimen, meteors and geological specimens are not included as far as I can tell)

  • by thaumasiotes on 6/21/25, 8:38 PM

    > Ginnerup dug up 14 glittering gold disks—some as big as saucers—that archaeologists say were buried about 1,500 years ago

    > the real showstopper is an amulet called a bracteate with two stylized designs: a man in profile, his long hair pulled back in a braid, and a horse in full gallop. An expert in ancient runes says she was awestruck when she finally made out the inscription on top: “He is Odin’s man.”

    > These embossed runes are the oldest known written mention of Odin, the Norse god of war and ruler of Valhalla. Ginnerup’s bracteate, which archaeologists describe as the most significant Danish find in centuries, extended the worship of Odin back 150 years

    I don't think this is right. The first mention of Odin by a Germanic source could date to 500 AD. But the Romans wrote about the Germanic gods several centuries prior to that. They used the equivalence we still use today, calling Odin "Mercury". But what they say about the Germanic gods is compatible with what we know from Germanic sources; there's no reason to believe there was a change in the gods.

    I note that the image on the bracteate features a pretty prominent swastika. Maybe Hitler was accidentally on to something after all.

  • by roger_ on 6/21/25, 9:24 PM

    Do the detectorists get a certificate or something for their honesty?

  • by trhway on 6/21/25, 11:14 PM

    how about hanging metal detector from a drone or just plain autonomous RC car. I think once such massive de-mining starts in Ukraine, the tech would trickle down into archaeology and the like fields.

  • by wewewedxfgdf on 6/21/25, 9:20 PM

    "The swastika design next to the man's head predates the adoption of this symbol by the Nazis."

    1,500 years ago!