Medal, Money & Snow
- Inka
- Sep 23, 2024
- 3 min read
Not many days after King Winter announced his arrival with laying the first frost last sunday he followed up with a good old snow sprinkling on the mountain tops, all the way down to the treeline. Down in the valleys the weather has mostly been terribly wet, cold and windy. So windy that two sturdy looking old birchtrees around the house snapped and fell. But on the two days when the sun peeked out between the clouds I grabbed the detector and went to check out two sites.
The first site was the camp where I found the Kriegsmarine badge, plus two other badges, a few weeks ago. I wanted to finally check a potential dumping pit there. It is a hole in the ground with bits of a cast iron oven and a barrack stove of the triangular type sticking out from the soil.
After prying loose the iron bits and lifting them out of the way it quickly became clear that this was the only metal present. I probed around a little bit with the shovel and the bayonet with no other finds than rocks. Well, at least I got it checked and out of the mind.
I spent the next hours going over and across the place but with very meager results. I`d dare call it empty, but then you`ll see an iron cross or something turn up next time.
I picked up a few crate- and box parts, the remains of a field made iron chandelier, several uniform buttons and the reserve tip for a ski.
In the entrance to a small bunker the detector gave a good signal, but it was a modern british teaspoon. Together with it were a pair of military rubber/canvas "shoes". Something to pull over the regular army boots in snowy- and wet conditions, I think. Definitely something forgotten by a soldier in one of the many Nato exercises the area has seen.
I also went back to the large camp where I found the Lappland shields last week. The first hour I tried moving around in a thicket near the river, but luckily there were no signals there as it would be very difficult to dig there. Some of the original wehrmacht barracks and garages are still standing so I wandered over and spent the rest of the day collecting metals from under the ground. The first signal was a nice Polish uniform button. I wonder how that ended up there,,possibly from a POW?
A strong aluminum signal got my heart racing. Was it a cache of lapplandshields? Or ten belt buckles, like Jimmy found earlier this summer (the lucky bastard)? Or was it a ditch full of food tins?
Absolutely it was. Food tins! Enough of them for a lifetime. I opened up another signal and found a bakelite cover for binoculars, but the reason for the signal was hiding in the grey soil. I could see a small ring and as I swept the sand away a KVK with Swords revealed itself! A very nice medal, my ninth or tenth find of these. They must have been popular, or maybe unpopular, since they turn up from the ground quite often.
I followed signals around the medal for the next hours and the result was pretty good. Several well preserved coins, Finnish,German and Norwegian ones.
And broken in two parts I found a very nicely decorated matchbox cover. The image was a vikingship with "Norge" underneath. It had much of the nicklecoating intact, and looking closely I could see specks of red paint on parts of the ship. I also dug up a small pendant, but it was too corroded to see any markings, some cream tubes, straps and buckles.
Another wet and cold week is starting tomorrow, and a few days later the hunting season begins. This will require me to wear my bright red digging hoddie, make the livestok distinguishable from forest animals with brightly colored knitted hats and sweaters, and at least the first week or until they have hunted their quota, it will limit the options of where to dig, but I might know of a place or two where I wont risk any stray bullets.
I wish it was summer again.
Thanks for reading and enjoy your week :)
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