The sensational archaeological discovery was made by a plumber and the machine operator in Aalborg, they were lucky to find the Medieval sword, which is described as having an “extremely high level of workmanship”, The Local Denmark reported on Thursday.
The unbelievable finding, the 1.1 metre-long sword has a detail that only highly-skilled armaments makers could have produced, said the experts. The authors of the discovery, Jannic Vestergaard and Henning Nøhr, have found a sword an intact and well-preserved when they were working on Tuesday on top of the oldest layer of paving on Algade, one of the city’s central streets.
The responsible danish men immediately called the Historical Museum of Northern Jutland, which later confirmed the discovery via its website. The archaeologist Kenneth Nielsen quickly concluded sword was of 14th-century Medieval origin.
“Discoveries from here generally point in the direction of the 1300s, so the sword must have ended in the ground in that century,” press statement reads.
A medieval sword is still sharp
the archaeologists reiterated that the swords were expensive items in the Middle Ages, and were only owned by wealthy segments of society such as the nobility. The recent Aalborg discovery includes a fuller, or a rounded longitudinal groove, a feature designed to reduce the weight of the more than metre-long weapon, which weighs just over 1 kilogram.
Its unusual placement could be related to its being lost under violent disturbances, given that the 1300s were a period of instability in Danish history with a series of internal power struggles.
“The best explanation we can come up with is that the owner of the sword was defeated in a battle. In the tumult, it was then trod down into the layer of mud that formed the street back then,” the archaeologist said.
