A 1,000-year-old sword was found in Iceland by hunters looking for geese

In southern Iceland, a group of five goose hunters have struck gold. Er, steel.

Last Friday (Sep. 2) the group of friends stumbled on a sword (Icelandic) lying in plain sight. The Icelandic Cultural Heritage Agency, which has since acquired the sword, dates the sword to around 950 AD, or earlier.

Kristín Huld Sigurðardóttir, director general of the agency, writes in an email that this is the 24th sword from Viking times found in Iceland. “Many of the swords are in pieces and even only found a part of the hilt,” she says, “So it is exciting to find an almost complete sword.”

“It was just lying there, waiting to be picked up,” Rúnar Stanley Sighvatsson, one of the men hunting, told Iceland Monitor. “It was obvious and just lying there on the ground.”