Since Wednesday is Woden’s day I reckoned Onsdag must be Odin’s day, but when I asked the hotel receptionist about this she seemed a little miffed… I am starting to worry the Danes don’t know their history as much as I have been lead to believe.
This morning I was back at the Nationalmuseet, and have spend most of the time looking at detector finds of hooked tags logged as part of danefæ; I am very grateful to Lisbeth Imer for all her help with this. To my surprise there have been relatively few such artefacts found here, which contrasts to England where about 400 examples are recorded on the PAS database alone. If any Danish detectorists have found such things please let me (and the Nationalmuseet) know…
Danish fact: the Danish flag (white cross on red) is believed to be the oldest in the world. Of course the English flag (red cross on white) is that of the Danes in reverse – though our cross is nicely centred. Just a thought: since our flag is that of St George and he was killing dragons in the C4th, then surely ours must be older!
This afternoon, I am making the trip west to Roskilde Museum Tadre Mølle, to meet with the Detecting Club Tellus - ’probably’ the largest detecting club in Denmark – and others. They have quite an evening planned for me…
A slight change of plan… Kenny Thygesen (Detecting Club Tellus) picked me up from the station and we went to Lejre Museum, which was fantastic as I ‘saw’ all about it last night. Here I met detectorists from across Denmark who were just as keen to tell me about how things work (and – to a lesser extent – do not) in Denmark, as I was to tell them about PAS – which obviously works fabulously. First Kenny gave a talk about the history of metal-detecting in Denmark and Danefae, after which we were treated to a tour of the museum (in English) by the curator. Then followed supper, which was fabulously prepared, afterwhich I gave my talk (for a bit longer than Kenny!) about PAS & the Treasure Act. We stayed late talking about the benefits of each countries systems and ways we might co-operate in the future. I was most impressed by their obvious enthusiasum to advance archaeological knowledge, and they clearly had a dim view of those who detect for financial gain; indeed, one person expressed frustration that the local museum didn’t think that some of his finds were Danefae, which of course would mean he would lose them…
I just want to say a big thank you to Kenny & Co for a truely hospitable evening (I was even driven back to Copenhagen). I am sure we in PAS will now expect such a 5 star service from our English and Welsh md clubs :)
It is now nearly the day after Onsdag, so see you then…