Viking Mästermyr tool chest
Cofre de herramientas vikingo de Mästermyr
- Date
- c. 1000 · confidence medium
- Place
- Mästermyr, Hablingbo, Gotland, Sweden
- Credited to
- Viking Age travelling smith-carpenter
- Field
- Tools
What was discovered
An iron-bound chest with around two hundred pieces, found in a Gotland bog in 1936, holding hammers, tongs, files, saws, drill bits, chisels, adzes and other smith's and carpenter's tools. It is the best-preserved complete kit of a travelling craftsman from early medieval Europe.
Dating (10th-11th centuries) rests on tool typology and associated objects, not on direct physical methods; complementary finds in the bog indicate a deliberate deposit.
What it led to
- knowledge of the real toolkit of Viking smiths and carpenters
- experimental reconstruction of Viking Age crafts
- evidence of itinerant craftsmen networks around the Baltic