8-Year-Old Skipping Rocks Accidentally Uncovers 1,000-Year-Old Viking Sword

Most children would be pretty thrilled to find a bug under a rock, and yet one 8-year-old in Sweden just found an ancient Viking sword in a lake. This is basically the coolest thing that can happen to a person, and we can only assume she is now queen of Sweden.

Saga -- which is her shockingly apt name -- was with her family at their summer house in Vidöstern lake in Tånnö, Småland in Sweden, when she made the find. The water was lower than usual this year because of a draught, and Saga's father asked her to bring a buoy out to him so they could warn boats about the shallow water. She was throwing rocks along the way and found "some kind of stick," she explained to The Local.

"I picked it up and was going to drop it back in the water, but it had a handle, and I saw that it was a little bit pointy at the end and all rusty. I held it up in the air and I said 'Daddy, I found a sword!' When he saw that it bent and was rusty, he came running up and took it."

They then took the sword to a neighbor who had some background in archaeology, and he explained that it looked like a legitimate find, so it was taken to the authorities. The 85-centimeter-long sword is estimated to be from as far back as the 5th or 6th century AD, according to The Local, and is likely pre-Viking.

"Why it has come to be there, we don't know," a representative of the museum the sword was turned over to explained. "When we searched a couple of weeks ago, we found another prehistoric object; a brooch from around the same period as the sword, so that means -- we don't know yet -- but perhaps it's a place of sacrifice."

While Saga had to keep the find a secret (the only person she told was her best friend) to maintain the integrity of the site, she's now been able to go public with it and was even given a party at school, complete with ice cream. It might even be called "Saga's Sword."

h/t The Local 

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