In late October the Gotland County Museum in Visby published a fieldwork report that points to a new direction in detectorist collaboration. In April the museum’s archaeologist Per Widerström and Martin Rundkvist of the University of Łódź directed a three-day metal detector survey with eleven members of the Swedish Metal Detector Association. The results are highly scientifically informative about a site whose interpretation has been debated since 1843.
This is the first time that Gotland’s heritage authorities have collaborated with organised detectorists. The project represents a new departure in a country known for heavy restrictions against metal-detector use by the public. Other Swedish county museums, prominently the one in Örebro, have pursued similar programmes of collaboration since at least 2017. But Gotland is a special case. This island’s many Viking Period silver hoards were the direct and explicit reason that Sweden created its nationwide metal detector restrictions in the 1980s.
The hoards of Gotland are easy to locate, usually being ploughed out, and the coordinates of known ones are published in the online Sites and Monuments Register because of the strong Freedom of Information principle codified in the Swedish constitution. Add to this the high price of Viking Period coins on the collector’s market, and the Swedish attitude is perhaps understandable. Several heritage criminals have served time in Swedish prisons for looting sites on Gotland. But critics have suggested that it makes little sense to apply rules tailored to that province all across the country.
The April fieldwork was performed under a permit invested in the County Museum, and thus has no direct bearing on the issue of how the public can use metal detectors in Sweden. But it signals an increasing willingness to make a clear distinction between looters and organised daylight detectorists, and collaborate with the latter.
Links
Fieldwork report:
Gotland County Museum:
Swedish Metal Detector Association: