I finally talked to a real historian about the Viking sword I found

So I dug up this old rusty blade in my backyard near Minneapolis last summer. I was convinced it was a Viking relic from some lost expedition. I took it to a professor at the local university for a look. He laughed and said it was a 19th century plow blade from an old farm. It hit me different because I realized how easy it is to let excitement cloud your judgment. Have any of you ever been totally wrong about a find and had an expert set you straight?

2 comments

2 Comments

owens.cameron15d ago

Every artifact hunter I've watched on those YouTube shows has had a similar wake-up call at some point. There's this one guy who was sure he found a civil war cavalry saber but it turned out to be a old fence post blade from the 1880s. The way your professor laughed off the Viking sword reminds me of that story. It's humbling when you realize how much context matters in archaeology versus just getting hyped over rusty metal. What do you think made you so convinced it was from the Viking era in the first place?

blakem3715d ago

Man you gotta admit the internet makes everything look WAY cooler than it really is! Those YouTube shows have all the dramatic zoom-ins and dramatic music so you feel like Indiana Jones for a second. Then reality hits you like a brick wall when your professor squints at it for ten seconds and goes "nope, that's just rusty farm junk." Pretty sure my brain just wanted it to be a Viking sword so bad that it filled in all the details I didn't know about. The shape was close enough to fool me if you only compared it to pictures and not real artifacts! Now I can't even look at that thing without seeing a fence blade, it's embarrassing how fast my hype died.