“I started to freak out before my brain would acknowledge what I was looking at,” he says.
It was July 29 , and Loren Lemcke had been gem search for seven hour , sieve through garbage , getting bitten by bugs , and subsisting on wild berries . He was about to hurl in the towel and catch a bus home when he come to the motherlode : a orphic ancient blade . This past Wednesday , the American exile documented his incredible find onTikTok .
“ I started to gross out out before my brain would acknowledge what I was looking at , ” he says . “ Once I found the sword I had to arrest dig . I did n’t have any push left . ”
in the first place from Tucson , Arizona , Lemcke has lived in Turku , Finland for the preceding decade . Though he has been into alloy detecting since childhood , he catch back into it after moving afield . Lemcke in the first place alloy detects onfarm fieldsafter necessitate permission from farmers and extend to remove aluminum barren in return . He estimates that he yields one interesting breakthrough per 50 to 100 firearm of garbage . Still , allow for this serve has earmark Lemcke to build connections with people who let him look for their land .
@metaldetectingfinland/TikTok
“ It ’s kind of just snowballed , as farmers know other farmers , ” Lemcke says .
Many European res publica highly confine metal detecting — or make the practice illegal — but Finland ’s “ everyman laws ” enable people to freely metal detect without a license so long as they stay away from protected areas , private holding , any seat that might do damage . Still , it ’s not just viewfinder keepers . Any object find out that is more than a century old must be reported to the government , which could potentially decide to lay claim the item . It ’s a bit different , though , when it come to much older items with historical significance , like the viking age sword ; archaeologists come in to investigate .
Nothing else was base nearby the blade , apart from a 1,000 - year - old hole . And Lemcke did n’t make any cash from the find — he gave it to a beleaguered local museum . “ I would recommend not getting into the hobby if you ’re interested in attain money , ” he notes . “ It is a terrible way to make money . ”
To some , metal detecting may vocalise like treasure hunt mixed with leg day , Lemcke insist it ’s also about the history and finding magic in the mankind around him . “ Every time I notice something Modern , it ’s an chance to study something new , ” he say . “ I like to see the history behind an object , and oftentimes they have interesting stories . ”
