Havor Hoard

[1][2] The hoard was discovered on the first day[1] of an archaeological excavation in April 1961, by a couple of workers who were removing turf from the mound around the hillfort.

Two men found a vessel containing several objects and "something that looked like gold" under a flat stone on the inside of the mound.

As there was no archaeologist present that day, they put the stone back and shoveled some dirt over it and continued to dig elsewhere.

The next day archaeologists took control of the site and police had to keep press, TV crews and spectators at bay.

[3] Manneke phoned his boss, professor Erik Nylén, who was in Stockholm at the time and he immediately flew to Gotland.

[8] On the handle of the situla were stamps reading "TOR, CANNIMASUIT, (P CI)PI POLYB and IPI(?)".

[1] No official archaeological report was written on the Havor hoard or the excavation of the site at the time of the find.

It is too large to be worn by a person and it is believed to have adorned a statue of a deity and was part of a treasure belonging to a temple.

[7][11] Five similar but smaller torcs have been found; one in Trollhättan, one in a bog on Jutland, two near Kyiv and one at Olbia by the Black Sea.

[8][12] The Havor Ring is the most richly decorated and technically most complicated of the six torcs with a ring-body made from several twisted gold wires figure-8-shaped filigree ornamentation on the cones by the claps orbs.

Their focus has been on a former employee at the museum – a now deceased archaeologist who was convicted of multiple antiquities thefts and sentenced to psychiatric care after having been diagnosed with kleptomania.