Boy, 9, And Grandfather Find Medieval Silver In Sweden

Stockholm - A 9-year-old boy's search for shrapnel on an old battlefield resulted in a huge find of medieval silver coins near the Lund in southern Sweden, local media reported Monday. Alexander Granhof, 9, and his grandfather made the recent discovery, dubbed "silverado" by archaeologists.

"We went out on the field looking for cannonballs," Alexander Granhof told the online edition of the Sydsvenskan newspaper. "I found a piece of metal and thought at first it was shrapnel from a shotgun. I shouted to grandfather and then we discovered more and more coins," he added.

In all, the pair found more than 4,600 coins on the field. Archaeologists, using metal detectors, boosted the tally to 7,000 but did not rule out that even more coins were hidden in the soil.

"This is incredible," Bernd Gerlach of the Lund University Historical Museum told reporters.

No reward sum has yet been determined but the silver in the treasure alone was estimated to be worth 1.5 million kronor (250,000 dollars). The coins had been placed in two urns that were wrapped in cloth. The treasure was likely buried during troubled times, and one theory was that the coins were church taxes collected from nearby farms.

The find included thousands of English coins with a high silver content and some other markers that likely were used locally.

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