Stige's treasure

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The Stige Treasure is Norrland's greatest silver treasure . He was found on September 4, 1903 by the farmer's son JA Norman in the village of Stige am Indalsälven in the municipality of Sundsvall , which lies in the Swedish region of Medelpad . The treasure consists of coins and jewelry and is dated to the Viking Age.

A total of around 2,000 coins and around 35 flans were found, the finds weigh a total of 3350 grams. The final coin comes from England and was minted in 1032 by order of Canute the Great , which is the term post quem for the treasure. The largest part (approx. 1400 coins) was minted in the Holy Roman Empire (the final coin in this group dates from 1021), 384 other coins come from England. There are also coins from the Islamic area (empires of the Umayyads , Abbasids , Samanids , Buyids , Hamdanids , Marwanids and Uqailids ), the Volga Bulgarians , Byzantium , Italy , Bohemia , Ireland and Scandinavian countries. The origin of the coins and the composition of the silver treasure is typical of coin finds from the Viking Age in the Baltic Sea region .

The treasure also includes 393 Otto Adelheid pfennigs and 93 Sachsen pfennigs . These are possibly related to the Viking attack on the trading settlement Stade (then called Stethu ), which was then important for the tribal duchy of Saxony and fortified by a castle. The dispute with the Vikings who invaded the Elbe estuary on ships is described in the Chronicle of Thietmar von Merseburg , whose family was personally badly affected by the attack. Bishop Bernward von Hildesheim , Duke Bernhard I of Saxony and King Otto III. had to provide a huge ransom to free the prisoners or the relatives held hostage in exchange. Some of the coins were minted in the episcopal fortress of Mundburg , for which silver from the royal ore mining sites of the Rammelsberg in the Harz Mountains was probably used. Coins from this period are part of various Viking silver hoards , including finds on Gotland , Fyn and Iceland .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Indiana Tribune, October 12, 1903 ( online ).
  2. ↑ Kenneth Jonsson: Myntets delar och delade mynt among vikingatiden. In: Myntstudier. 2004, number 5, pp. 1–16, here p. 9 ( PDF; 1.4 MB ).
  3. ^ Gert Hatz: Trade and traffic between the German Empire and Sweden in the late Viking Age. The German coins of the 10th and 11th centuries in Sweden. Kungl. Vitterhets-, historie- och antikvitetsakademien, Stockholm 1974, ISBN 91-7192-141-9 , find index no.152.
  4. ^ Henrik Sjöberg: Norrlands största silverskatt . In: Popular arkeologi. Volume 2016, number 3, pp. 16-17.
  5. ↑ Thietmar von Merseburg, Chronik 4,23-25.
  6. ^ Dietrich Schmidtsdorff: Ransom money for the Vikings was struck on the Mundburg. In: Monetary History News. Volume 40, 2005, number 224, pp. 167–173.

literature

  • Gert Hatz: Trade and traffic between the German Empire and Sweden in the late Viking Age. The German coins of the 10th and 11th centuries in Sweden. Kungl. Vitterhets-, historie- och antikvitetsakademien, Stockholm 1974, ISBN 91-7192-141-9 (also habilitation thesis, University of Hamburg 1971), p. 220 and Fund index No. 152.
  • Per H. Ramqvist: Depå Handel Bebyggelse. Raä nr 36 i Stige, Indal socks, Medelpad. En öppen arkeologisk undersökning med tillgänglighetoch folkbildning i centrum. En bildbetonad rapport från aktiviteterna August 25th - September 19th 2003, Rapporter från regional arkeologi 2, Örnsköldsvik 2003. ( PDF, Swedish ).

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