what to do
with it.
Once upon a time – in 1889, to be precise – a hardworking farmer dug up a fabulous ancient treasure – the Karlsholm chalice. I’m not talking about Viking loot; the
chalice dates from the so-called Migration Period, three to four hundred years before the Vikings. It was an enormously wealthy era in Scandinavia. As one authority said, the whole period glitters
with gold – gold ingots and bars, gold coins, neck rings, and collars. Most of it was buried and never retrieved, possibly because its owners failed to return from their next raid on the
dying Roman Empire, whence much of the treasure had come in the form of loot or tribute or ransom. One estimate stuck in my mind – the amount of gold used in the famous lurs , or horns,
was worth about 1650 Roman solidi – the ransom of two hundred legionnaires.
The lurs came from Jutland, in Denmark, and the most interesting thing about them is that they were found, by accident, in the same field – a century apart.
I felt fairly sure I was dealing with a parallel case. The Karlsholm chalice was found in 1889. Almost a hundred years later someone unearthed another object in the same field – a field
belonging to Gustaf Jonsson. A farmer, less honest than the majority of his countrymen, or a professional archaeological thief, following up a clue – I might never know, and it wasn’t
important. What was important was that the finder tried to sell his discovery to John, who enjoyed a certain reputation in his own slimy world.
I had never checked John’s professional qualifications (it would have been a little difficult, since I didn’t know his real name), but apparently he knew his subject well enough to
have arrived at the same conclusion I had: Where there were two treasures, there might be more. Excavation of the site could produce a hoard like the one found in Södermanland, which contained
more than twelve kilos of gold. Naturally, the real value of ancient jewellery is considerably higher than the value of the gold itself – worth a little trouble on John’s part.
Investigating, he had learned that the site was owned by a wealthy, rigidly honest old gentleman who was disinclined to get matey with strangers. John’s reputed charm wouldn’t have
the slightest effect on Gus. He had had to find another means of access – me. Anyone of Scandinavian descent is likely to have an ancestor named Johnson, or one of its variants.
John obviously knew a lot more about me than I knew about him. Since I had nothing to hide, my family history and connections would be easy to discover. So ‘Aunt Ingeborg’ had
written to Gus, suggesting a meeting with her niece, and if I had gone to the hotel John selected for me, Gus would have called me. Except for the inconvenient demise of Aunt Ingeborg, I might have
believed the story. She had been my great-aunt, actually, and an interfering old busybody. It would have been just like her to make appointments for me without bothering to ask whether I wanted to
keep them. I had written to Mother about my intention of travelling to Sweden. There would have been time – barely enough time – for Ingeborg to notify Gus of my plans.
Once I was in residence at Gus’s home in Karlsholm, John would move in. I wondered how he had planned to do it. Surely not the hoary old car-breakdown trick; he was more inventive than
that. It was all rather chancy, but that was typical of John. No doubt he had several tentative approaches worked out.
However, his informant had crossed him up, peddling the information in several markets simultaneously. One such market was the one run by the silhouette cutter. It was strange how drastically
John’s disclosure had altered my impression of the little man, from that of a harmless eccentric to a figure of sinister villainy, snip-snipping away with his sharp-pointed scissors, reducing
a human face to a flat black outline.
I wondered if it had occurred to John, as it had
with it.
Once upon a time – in 1889, to be precise – a hardworking farmer dug up a fabulous ancient treasure – the Karlsholm chalice. I’m not talking about Viking loot; the
chalice dates from the so-called Migration Period, three to four hundred years before the Vikings. It was an enormously wealthy era in Scandinavia. As one authority said, the whole period glitters
with gold – gold ingots and bars, gold coins, neck rings, and collars. Most of it was buried and never retrieved, possibly because its owners failed to return from their next raid on the
dying Roman Empire, whence much of the treasure had come in the form of loot or tribute or ransom. One estimate stuck in my mind – the amount of gold used in the famous lurs , or horns,
was worth about 1650 Roman solidi – the ransom of two hundred legionnaires.
The lurs came from Jutland, in Denmark, and the most interesting thing about them is that they were found, by accident, in the same field – a century apart.
I felt fairly sure I was dealing with a parallel case. The Karlsholm chalice was found in 1889. Almost a hundred years later someone unearthed another object in the same field – a field
belonging to Gustaf Jonsson. A farmer, less honest than the majority of his countrymen, or a professional archaeological thief, following up a clue – I might never know, and it wasn’t
important. What was important was that the finder tried to sell his discovery to John, who enjoyed a certain reputation in his own slimy world.
I had never checked John’s professional qualifications (it would have been a little difficult, since I didn’t know his real name), but apparently he knew his subject well enough to
have arrived at the same conclusion I had: Where there were two treasures, there might be more. Excavation of the site could produce a hoard like the one found in Södermanland, which contained
more than twelve kilos of gold. Naturally, the real value of ancient jewellery is considerably higher than the value of the gold itself – worth a little trouble on John’s part.
Investigating, he had learned that the site was owned by a wealthy, rigidly honest old gentleman who was disinclined to get matey with strangers. John’s reputed charm wouldn’t have
the slightest effect on Gus. He had had to find another means of access – me. Anyone of Scandinavian descent is likely to have an ancestor named Johnson, or one of its variants.
John obviously knew a lot more about me than I knew about him. Since I had nothing to hide, my family history and connections would be easy to discover. So ‘Aunt Ingeborg’ had
written to Gus, suggesting a meeting with her niece, and if I had gone to the hotel John selected for me, Gus would have called me. Except for the inconvenient demise of Aunt Ingeborg, I might have
believed the story. She had been my great-aunt, actually, and an interfering old busybody. It would have been just like her to make appointments for me without bothering to ask whether I wanted to
keep them. I had written to Mother about my intention of travelling to Sweden. There would have been time – barely enough time – for Ingeborg to notify Gus of my plans.
Once I was in residence at Gus’s home in Karlsholm, John would move in. I wondered how he had planned to do it. Surely not the hoary old car-breakdown trick; he was more inventive than
that. It was all rather chancy, but that was typical of John. No doubt he had several tentative approaches worked out.
However, his informant had crossed him up, peddling the information in several markets simultaneously. One such market was the one run by the silhouette cutter. It was strange how drastically
John’s disclosure had altered my impression of the little man, from that of a harmless eccentric to a figure of sinister villainy, snip-snipping away with his sharp-pointed scissors, reducing
a human face to a flat black outline.
I wondered if it had occurred to John, as it had
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