Archaeologists from Denmark’s Moesgaard Museum had an idea that something substantial lay hidden beneath the fields of Søften, a small town outside the city of Aarhus on the Jutland Peninsula. Over the years, metal detectorists exploring the area had occasionally recovered coins and pieces of silver dating to the Viking Age (ca. a.d. 750–1066). These finds provided enticing clues that a site from that era might exist somewhere nearby. When planned infrastructure work led to brief preliminary archaeological investigations in 2008 and 2013, the museum staff’s suspicions were confirmed. Archaeologists found postholes and other remnants of ancient buildings suggesting that a Viking community had indeed occupied the site between a.d. 800 and 1000. The archaeologists, though, had no idea how extensive and significant the site would turn out to be.
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