This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Ten years ago, in 2016, a metal detectorist came upon a hoard of gold. It had been buried in the dirt for around 1,800 years and consisted of around 396 grams (14 ounces) of gold rings.
The detectorist handed in his finds to a museum and received the largest finder's fee ever paid out in Norwegian history. He had been rewarded for the gold weight, not its rarity. Meanwhile, around two years earlier, another find, considerably less heavy but far rarer, had earned a comparatively higher reward relative to its weight.
Its finder was paid for its uniqueness. A new study published in Public Archaeology took a closer look at how Norway's reward system ranks its golden objects and found that it often values an object's weight and rarity over what it can tell us about history. Common finds are often deemed "mass material" and are therefore considered less valuable than a rare find, said study author Irmelin Axelsen, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oslo, even though mass material "can tell us something about groups and patterns, which singular artifacts cannot, because they're precisely that, outliers." If you live in Norway and stumble upon a gold or silver object older than A.D. 1537, that object is considered state property and needs to be handed in, the study reported.
As a reward for finding the archaeological artifact, you're paid the metal's current value plus 10%. But two cases show the law isn't quite so straightforward. In 2016, the Skaun hoard, made up of 17 golden rings, was discovered and took the media by storm.
Archaeologists at NTNU University Museum were quoted as describing it as a "fantastic" and "truly unique" find. Yet a few months later, they changed their minds, deeming it a common find of so-called "payment gold." The museum suggested that the Skaun hoard's finder should be paid 155,000 Norwegian kroner, about €17,000. The reward was based on the weight of the find.
The sum broke records, and yet the detectorist called it unusual, recalling a similar find made a few years earlier that had weighed far less and yet been valued more per gram of gold. Tornes consisted of only five gold objects weighing roughly 19 grams (0.67 ounces). And yet the finder's fee amounted to 73,000 kroner.
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