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The Spillings Hoard () is the world's largest Viking Age silver treasure, found on Friday 16July 1999 in a field at the Spilling farm northwest of Slite, on northern Gotland, Sweden. The silver hoard consisted of two parts with a total weight of before conservation and consisted of, among other things, 14,295 coins most of which were from other countries. A third deposition containing over of bronze scrap-metal was also found. The three caches had been hidden under the floorboards of a Viking outhouse sometime during the 9th century.
With filming complete, Ström and Jonsson decided to continue their survey of the field. Twenty minutes after the TV-crew had left, they heard a strong signal from their metal detector, which led them to the smaller of the two silver caches. A couple of hours later and only from the first find, they received another signal from the detector:
The site was hurriedly cordoned off, back-up crew from the museum was sent for, permission for an archaeological excavation was immediately sought at the County Administrative Board and guards were posted. However, instead of keeping the find a secret, the Gotland Museum decided to go public with the find immediately. During the first weekend, over 2,000 people visited the excavation site.
Some days later, the metal detector indicated a third metal cache approximately from the first find. The archaeologists concentrated on uncovering the two first finds before starting with the third. Due to the size of the hoards and the fragility of the objects, the bottom layers of the depositions were encapsulated in plaster. Only when they tried to lift the finds out of the soil did the archaeologists realize how heavy the hoards were. The smaller weighed and the larger one . An attempt to X-ray the finds at the local hospital failed because they contained so much silver that the X-ray plates remained blank.
The larger find was intact but the smaller had been damaged by a plough. A previous landowner who visited the excavation commented that he had found metal wires around the find-spot several years earlier, but thinking that they were only steel wire, he had thrown them away. It was therefore concluded that the treasure had originally been even larger.
With the two first caches taken care of, the third deposition was excavated almost a year after the first discovery. It contained over of bronze scrap-metal, most of which had been partially melted into a 'cake'. This find was deemed even more valuable since very few finds contain such large amounts of bronze intended for smelting.
An extended survey and excavation revealed the foundations of a building and indicated that the hoards had been placed under the floorboards of what would probably have been a warehouse, shed or storage rather than a dwelling since it had no hearth. Carbon dating showed that the building had been in use between 540 and 1040. The foundations and the remaining indicated a regular Viking Age structure, about with a slanting Cladium mariscus-covered roof, much like other similar finds on Gotland. It had been built on an older Iron Age foundation.
Although silver hoards and treasures are not unusual on Gotland, this was an exceptionally large find. One explanation may be found in the location near some of the island's best and most significant harbours during the Viking Age. The silver in the caches would have been enough to pay the tax to the Swedish king for all of Gotland for five years.
The following surveys and excavations of the fields surrounding the find-site showed that the site had been inhabited continuously over 1,000 years up until the 19th century. Over 700 more objects were retrieved, such as objects of bronze and copper, fired clay, clothes pins, a piece of glass, tile pieces, chains, needles, glass beads, slag, iron nails, polished Gemstone and brick.
The Spillings Hoard is the world's largest Viking silver treasure. A finder's fee of Swedish krona 2,091,672 (approx. US$242,400) was paid to the landowner for the treasure, although the real value of it is much higher. It was the largest amount of money ever paid for a find in Sweden, according to director of the Swedish National Heritage Board Sven Göthe. The hoard was dated to have been hidden some time after 870–71. The treasure is on permanent display in the Gotland Museum.
, more than of silver from over 700 caches deposited between the 9th and 12th centuries have been found on Gotland. This includes 168,000 silver coins from the Arab world, North Africa and Central Asia.
Almost 60% of the find consisted of 486 or parts thereof, making it the largest ever find of such silver jewellery . Most of the bracelets weighed around 100 grams under the mark-weight system and were of traditional Gotlandic design, a number of them have very detailed ornamentation. There were also bangles of British and Western Scandinavian design as well as plain, undecorated fingerings of Finnish and British design, known as ring money.
Of the 14,295 coins found, 14,200 were Islamic , four were Nordic (from Hedeby), one was Byzantium and 23 were from Iran. The earliest, a Persian coin, dates from 539 and the latest from 870. Many of the coins (as well as the bangles) had marks that may have been made when the purity of the silver was tested. There were several imitations and fakes among the coins. The illegal copies were made from good silver, but made in other places than where the originals were minted. All in all, 69 different minting locations from 15 present-day countries were identified in the hoard.
During the conservation work of the larger hoard (No 2) it became evident that the larger objects had been placed at the bottom of the cache and the smaller ones, ending with the cut coins, had been strewn on top.
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