OSLO, NORWAY—More than 100,000 coins, as well as an assortment of other objects, have been found beneath the wooden floorboards of medieval Christian churches in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. Science Nordic reports that Svein Harald Gullbekk of the University of Oslo and his team looked for patterns in the medieval artifacts, which he thinks were dropped from people’s pockets during services in Sweden’s Bunge Church. “When we investigated where hairpins, pearls, and other objects associated with women were found in Bunge Church in Gotland, we found that more than 95 percent of them were on the north side of the nave,” he said. This corresponds with the historic practice of segregating men and women within the building, placing women to the north. Most of the people in the building would have remained standing through the entire service. Benches were provided along the sides only for the elderly and infirm. To read about caches of coins and other objects discovered buried on Gotland, go to “Hoards of the Vikings.”
