Nine-year-old Alexander Granhof and his grandfather Jens have made what is believed to be the largest ever find in southern Sweden of silver coins from the Middle Ages.

Alexander and his granddad were out exploring the site of the Battle of Lund (1676) when the boy happened on some silver coins coated in verdigris. The buried treasure had likely come to the surface when the field in which they were wandering was recently plowed.

A day later, archaeologists from the National Heritage Board arrived at the site with metal detectors and were quickly able to find two clay vessels containing more than 7,000 silver coins dating from around 1300 AD.

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For an archaeologist, the words "Viking", "Coins" and "Sweden" are likely to bring to mind Sweden’s island province of Gotland, a known Viking hub or trading center where several hundred silver coin hoards have been discovered over the years. (See map of Gotland).

In just a bit of an unusual twist, a treasure trove of Viking silver coins have been found on Sweden itself. The Local, a Sweden news site, reports 450 silver coins were uncovered by archaeologists from the Swedish National Heritage Board—an agency of the Swedish government responsible for preserving Sweden’s heritage and historic treasures.

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