Trevor Penny is a magnet hobbyist who spends his weekends searching for metal objects lost at the bottom of Oxfordshire rivers. Last November 10, on a day in which he could barely dedicate a couple of hours to his favorite hobby, he came across “the best find” of his entire life.
Located on a bridge in the course of the River Cherwell, a tributary of the Thames in central England, this magnetic fisherman, a member of the Thame Magnet Fishing Facebook group, cast his line with a magnet with a tensile force of up to 1,200 kilos and caught a surprising object: a sword completely corroded after centuries in water.
Penny thought it was more than 250 years old, although it was possibly a medieval weapon, as she explained in a post with images published on social networks. She then contacted the Oxfordshire county liaison officer, responsible for recording archaeological finds, who told her that it was rare to find whole swords and treasures of historical importance still intact.
They then decided to send the blade and its hilt so that they could be examined by researchers at the Oxford museum, who this week confirmed that the weapon was a Viking sword that is around 1,200 years old (850-975 AD).
According to the Norse Sagas, the legendary Ragnar Lodbrok was captured by King Aella of Northumbria in 865 and Ragnar’s sons would have recruited the great pagan army. Although this story is surely just a legend, historians have confirmed that several Viking leaders formed a powerful militia that landed in the kingdom of East Anglia (east of Oxford) in 866 to try to conquer England.
Scandinavian warriors had been plundering and trading with the Saxon leaders of the British Isles for decades. At the end of the 8th century, specifically in the year 793, the first Viking ships reached the British coast and their occupants raided a monastery on Lindisfarne, an island in the northeast of Great Britain.
Similar raids occurred decades ago and intensified after the year 835, when larger Viking fleets began to arrive and fight the armies of the various British kingdoms. In the 10th century, local monarchs gradually reconquered territory captured by the Vikings and unified what was a patchwork of fiefdoms into a new domain called Englalond.
After finding the sword, Trevor Penny had some trouble with the owner of the land near Enslow Township where the weapon turned up. “They sent a legal document saying that they would take no action on the condition that the sword was given to a museum, which I had already done,” he explained in statements to the Oxford Mail newspaper.
“The find was incredible. “It is the oldest thing that has been found thanks to magnet fishing in this county,” concludes this magnetic fisherman, member of the Thame Magnet Fishing group.
