Marcin Wisniewski was having a slow day. At first, his metal detector identified only bottle caps and beer cans. Then his machine became so quiet that he wondered whether it had stopped working. When it finally started beeping, he assumed it had detected another piece of trash.
As he dug, part of a mysterious metal artifact emerged. It was long and thin, and it was lodged firmly in the dirt. The treasure hunter realized that he had uncovered one end of a bronze sword, which was sticking straight up from the ground.
"The object appeared before my eyes as if through a fog," Wisniewski says in a social media post, according to a translation by journalist Maria Kaminska. "My vision blurred. I looked again and thought, 'I can't believe it.'"
The discovery occurred on June 14, when Wisniewski was surveying a forest in northern Poland. He realized that he had found something exciting when he uncovered a hint of the sword's green patina.
After the initial excitement, Wisniewski had a decision to make: Should he try to pull the sword out of the ground? He ultimately decided to rebury the artifact's exposed end, marking the spot with a beer can he had found nearby. Attempting to recover it himself would be too risky.
The next day, the metal detectorist sent photos of his discovery to local officials, who decided to act right away. Despite cold and rainy conditions, they returned to the forest near the city of Gdansk and conducted a careful excavation. Wisniewski witnessed the dig and held the sword for a celebratory photo.
"I was standing in front of an object that I estimate is about 3,000 years old," he adds in the post. "Someone, for some reason, drove it into the ground, and after all these years I was able to hold it in my hands."
Measuring nearly two feet long, the sword dates to between roughly 900 and 700 B.C.E., according to a statement from the Provincial Office for the Protection of Monuments (PUOZ). At that time, it was likely quite valuable. Experts think it once had a handle made from organic materials such as wood or bone. The handle has not survived, but the engraved patterns decorating the blade are still visible.
The sword's upright position is unusual. Other examples have been found in Europe, but they are quite rare, says Dawid Sych, a scholar of metalwork wear analysis at the University of Leicester in England. The reason the sword was buried in this position remains unclear.
Similar artifacts have been discovered in the region. In the 1920s, two bronze antenna swords, named for the pair of ornaments on their hilts, were found in a peat bog. They were acquired by the Provincial Museum in Gdansk but later went missing.
Marcin Tyminski, a spokesperson for PUOZ, says the newly discovered sword will go to a museum, though officials have not yet decided which one. He adds that more information about the artifact will be released after experts study it.
Wisniewski, an avid metal detectorist, has discovered other artifacts before, including necklaces and a bracelet from the eighth century B.C.E. On the day he found the sword, he was preparing for five weeks of travel and wanted to fit in one more search before leaving.
Elsewhere in Poland, construction workers found a tenth-century sword in 2024 while dredging the Vistula River. Scans detected an inscription on the blade that read "U[V]LFBERTH," a word found on more than 150 other medieval swords. Its exact meaning remains a mystery, though experts think it may be a Frankish name.