Hoen Hoard ~ The Largest Viking Treasure Ever Found

The Vikings.
An ancient warrior branch of the Norse, a Germanic tribe who once settled within Scandinavia.
They spoke Old Norse, and flourished between 800 to 1300 AD, during which, they rampaged across most of the northern hemisphere, trading the booty via their Northern European homelands which grew across wide areas of northern, central, eastern, and western Europe.
And the best it seems, they reserved for themselves, the Hoen Hoard being an impressive example.
The biggest ever publicly known find of Viking gold, it is a testament to the Vikings taste, technological abilities, and indeed wealth.
Found in 1875 on Hoen farm in Øvre Eiker, Buskerud, Norway, it was discovered during digging works near the Drammenselva river in Buskerud.
The location was later realised to have been an geographically strategic location, linking vital travel routes during the Viking Age for the control of goods, between the inner parts of Eastern Norway and the coast.
The hoard totalled 206 pieces, of which 54 were gold or silver objects, twenty solid gold coins, 132 beads of glass and semi-precious stones, and much more. The hoard has not been complete since 1929, when it was included by Sigurd Grieg in his catalogue of Viking-period hoards found in Norway.
In 1996 Signe Horn Fuglesang and the Centre for Viking and Medieval Studies of the University of Oslo, initiated a renewed study of the Hoen hoard, drawing on the expertise of scholars in various disciplines, splitting the hoard for specific investigation from different select specialists, including fourteen authors who contributed to its monograph.
Interestingly, neither silver nor gold were mined within Scandinavia during the Viking period, and thus both metals had to have been imported. We know that Arabic dirhams were a major source of silver, fuelling the Viking silver economy… But where did their gold come from?
The principal source was actually pre-Viking, gold works usually of Late Roman and early Byzantine, including gold coins from as early as the 5th to early sixth centuries AD. Huge quantities of priceless golden relics, including bracelets, rings, ingots and brooches, eventually deposited in hoards, with Scandinavia alone, according to archaeologist Lotte Hedeager… Amounting to over 50 kg of discoveries, the Hoen hoard containing a massive 2.59 kilograms of this…
It provides a glimpse of what sort of golden objects must have come into Viking hands during the ninth century.
They include a three-armed mount from a Carolingian sword-belt, transformed into a brooch by the addition of a pin, an Anglo-Saxon gold finger-ring, with gold coins, including Arabic dinars, and Carolingian and Byzantine issues, once pierced and worn as pendants on a necklace. The best items were often preserved in their original form, with others melted down to fashion new ornaments in a Scandinavian style.
We may never know who hid the Coen hoard, but the insight it gives us into this once incredibly successful, and indeed highly enigmatic group has proven invaluable.