Twitter/Jönköpings Läns Museum
An 8-year-old Swedish girl has discovered a 1,500-year-old sword while swimming at a local lake. The girl, Saga Vanecek, initially mistook the ancient relic for a stick after she stumbled upon it in the Vidöstern lake. “I was outside in the water, throwing sticks and stones and stuff to see how far they skip, and then I found some kind of stick,” she told Swedish media. Her father, Andy Vanecek, only realized the object’s significance after having a friend look at it, which prompted him to show it to local experts. Archaeologists at the Jönköpings Läns Museum now say the ancient relic dates back to before the Viking Age, in the 5th or 6th century AD, and the discovery of it in the Vidöstern lake could mean the area is a hot spot for other archaeological treasures. “Why it has come to be there, we don’t know," Mikael Nordström, an expert from the museum, told the English-language newspaper The Local. “When we searched a couple of weeks ago, we found another prehistoric object; a brooch from around the same period as the sword, so that means—we don’t know yet—but perhaps it’s a place of sacrifice,” he said.