I love stories like this one, because it’s exactly the kind of thing that happens to detectorists all over the world and most of the time nobody outside the hobby ever hears about it. A Norwegian detectorist called Morten Eek dug up what he assumed was a scruffy old button, chucked it in a tray with his other scrap, and didn’t think about it again for months. Turns out it was a silver coin minted for Magnus Barefoot, sometimes called Norway’s last Viking king, and it’s the only one of its exact type ever found on Norwegian soil.
If you’ve ever pulled something out of the ground, decided it was junk, and nearly binned it, you’ll know exactly the feeling.
Found in the plough soil near an old monastery
Eek made the find back in April 2025, searching a field near Utstein Monastery in southwest Norway, a spot with a long and layered history stretching back well before the monastery itself was built. The object came up from the plough layer, only 10 to 15 centimetres down. One side was bright and silvery. The other was covered in copper with a dark spot in the middle, which is exactly what a worn post-medieval button looks like when it comes out of the ground. Eek took it home and put it with his other buttons and scrap finds, and there it sat.
It was months later, showing his finds to fellow club members, that someone spotted the silver side had a design on it that looked less like a button and more like a coin. It resembled an illustration in a Norwegian reference book on medieval coinage from 1865. That was enough to make them stop and get it checked properly.
What the experts found
The University of Stavanger’s Museum of Archaeology took a look and confirmed it was no button. The coin had been deliberately altered after it was struck. Someone, at some point, folded the coin’s edge around a copper plate fixed to one face, and two small notches on the rim suggest a loop or chain was once attached, meaning the coin had a second life as jewellery, probably worn rather than spent.
Rather than prise the copper plate off and risk damaging a fragile object, the museum X-rayed it instead. That scan revealed a griffin design hidden underneath, paired with a “cross-over-cross” motif visible on the exposed face. That specific pairing of griffin and cross-over-cross is only known from four other coins in the world, one from a hoard found in the Faroe Islands in 1863 and three from a large Danish hoard uncovered just this spring. In total, only around a hundred coins from Magnus Barefoot’s reign are known, spread across a dozen finds, so a new one matters.
Magnus Barefoot ruled Norway from 1093 to 1103, a warrior king in the old Viking mould who campaigned as far as the Isle of Man and the Irish Sea before being killed in an ambush in Ireland at about 30 years old. He’s also credited with a coinage reform, restoring the silver content of Norwegian coins to around 90 percent after earlier kings had let it slide. So this little battered coin, mistaken for a button and left in a tray for months, actually ties into the politics, warfare and economics of an entire reign.
Why this matters to detectorists
What I really like about this one is what it says about patience and not writing things off too quickly. Every detectorist has a tray, a pocket or a shed shelf full of “maybe nothing” finds, the corroded lumps and worn discs that don’t look like much at first glance. This is a proper reminder that it’s always worth a second look, especially anything with a design or lettering you can’t immediately place, before it goes in the scrap bin or the hedge. If you are not sure what you are looking at, our guide on how to identify metal detecting finds walks through the tools and sources that help.
It’s also a nice example of what should happen when you’re not sure what you’ve found. Eek didn’t clean it, didn’t try to prise the copper plate off himself, and didn’t sit on it. He got it in front of people who could identify it properly. That instinct to leave a fragile find alone is exactly right, and it is why our guide on how to clean finds safely mostly tells you when not to clean at all. Getting an unusual find in front of someone qualified is the same principle behind our own Portable Antiquities Scheme and Finds Liaison Officers here in the UK: get it checked by someone qualified before you do anything that might damage it or its context. If you’re ever unsure whether something might be old, or might need reporting, our guide on what counts as treasure under UK law is worth a read, because the rules on precious metal content and age catch a lot of finds people don’t expect.
Norway doesn’t run the Treasure Act, but the instinct is the same everywhere serious detecting happens: get it in front of an expert, don’t guess, and don’t clean it yourself.
Sources: Reported by Live Science and Arkeonews, drawing on a statement from the University of Stavanger Museum of Archaeology.
This is an independent Detectorist World write-up. See the linked reports above for the original coverage and photos.
