Field yields hefty chest of copper coins

Photo: Eili Arula / Vooremaa

Last Monday, a man named Siim, native of Jõgeva County, decided to walk his field with a metal detector – happening upon a buried box with some 9,000 copper coins dating back to Swedish Era.

Siim borrowed the metal detector from a friend, in order to locate old waste water pipes in his home yard, to be replaced by new ones. Mission completed, Siim felt inspired to try the device out at a field nearby. «I walked the field for half an hour, say. Halted by a decent signal, I got to digging,» recalls the man.

Little did he know what this would lead to. «Half the spade deep, coins started to come out. I dug ‘em out with mine bare hands, the treasure looked endless. Coins upon coins upon coins,» continues the story.

At a closer look, the coins proved to date back to the Swedish Era, mainly a quarter of an öre. On some, the finder detected dates like 1635 and 1653.

Siim purposed to take the coins home and let the metal-detector-owner know. The friend, in his turn, advised Siim contact Ain Alatsei, Jõgeva County’s chief detector-enthusiast. Mr Alatsei informed National Heritage Board.

The Board sent out Tartu County senior inspector Karin Vimberg and Ingmar Noorlaid, archaeology specialist at EstLatRus frontier project. The amount of coins shown by Siim startled them both. «A heap so big we have never seen,» gasped Mr Noorlaid and Ms Vimberg alike.

Formalising the finding, Karin Vimberg was forced to be her vaguest, as counting all coins would have taken hours on end. So, the inspector wrote: 50 litres.

«Quite a job to get them off the field. One wheelbarrow-fill at a time,» says Siim. The coins proved so heavy that a 40-litre pot, filled close to the brim, could hardly be moved by the archaeology expert. Lacking a weighing instrument mighty enough, the men assessed the find at close to hundred kilograms – going by gut feeling.  

For whatever reasons the money chest had been hidden, here, the men shied to guess. Arriving at the scene, the detector-in-chief Ain Alatsei surveyed Swedish era maps and surveyed no settlement; even so, deciding by the landscape, there may have once been a building here, somewhere.

When it came to the value of the coins, the experts were hard pressed. «Well, let’s say it’s a hundred kilos of coins (220 lb), quarter öres mostly. Silver thaler contained four kilograms of such,» reckoned Mr Alatsei. As revealed by quick math, the find amounted to 25 thalers. At the estimation of Mauri Kiudsoo, Tallinn University archaeologist and keeper of numismatic collection thereof, at least a dozen decent riding horses could have been purchased for the amount. 

Also, as calculated by Mr Alatsei, the find may contain about 9,000 coins, considering that they weighed about a hundred kilograms, and a copper quarter weighs 11 grams. All this being pure speculation, of course.

Siim stands to be awarded finder’s fee. Up to hundred per cent of the value of the treasure, they say. The coins – outstanding by amount and way of preservation thereof – will now undergo conservation. To await decision regarding their further fate.