
03/04/2025
The Mästermyr Chest.
The place known as Mästermyr on the Swedish island of Gotland used to be a lake. The lake was drained in the early 20th century and when a farmer named Hugo Kraft in 1936 was plowing up a section of the resulting mucky fields, his plow struck something solid. It turned out to be a tool chest. The chest was 90 cm (35 in) long, 26 cm (10 in) wide and 24 cm (9.4 in) high and it had a chain wrapped around it, locked with a padlock. The Swedish Historical Museum has dated the chest to "Viking period," 800-1100 AD.
The chest turned out to be full of tools. If the dating is right, this is the oldest major assemblage of European tools. It contained more than 200 objects, including axes, hammers, tongs, chisels, saw blades, hand drills, padlocks, chains -- tools for both woodworking and metalworking as well as odds and ends like nails and lock parts. And the most amazing part of the discovery is -- the tool designs show that modern hand tools haven't changed much in design since the early Roman age all the way to what we can buy today!
We can only suggest why this tool box ended up in the lake. Perhaps it was lost in a boat-wreck, or if it was intentionally hidden.
But it was a great loss to who ever lost it. Metal at that time came at a huge cost! A sword during that period would cost up to 4 years wages to the average man. When the armies were called together 2/3 of them turned up with little more than an axe or spear because men couldn't afford the steel for armor or helmets.