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Forbes
10-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Today's NYT Mini Crossword Clues And Answers For Thursday, July 10th
Looking for help with today's NYT Mini Crossword puzzle? Here are some hints and answers for the ... More puzzle. In case you missed Wednesday's NYT Mini Crossword puzzle, you can find the answers here: It's Thursday, or if you want to get a little mythological with it, Thor's Day. Several of our weekdays are named after Norse gods. Tuesday for Tyr, Wednesday for Odin, Thursday for Thor, Friday for Freya. Saturday, of course, bucks this trend and gives the Roman god Saturn his very own day. Stranger still, Saturday is not named after a Roman god in most Romance languages. In Spanish, sábado is derived from the Hebrew Sabbath. In any case, we have a NYT Mini Crossword to solve, so let's solve it! The NYT Mini is a smaller, quicker, more digestible, bite-sized version of the larger and more challenging NYT Crossword, and unlike its larger sibling, it's free-to-play without a subscription to The New York Times. You can play it on the web or the app, though you'll need the app to tackle the archive. Spoilers ahead! FEATURED | Frase ByForbes™ Unscramble The Anagram To Reveal The Phrase Pinpoint By Linkedin Guess The Category Queens By Linkedin Crown Each Region Crossclimb By Linkedin Unlock A Trivia Ladder Before we get to the answers, here's the first letter for each word in today's Mini. Across 1A. 5x5 crossword – M 5A. Breakfast sandwich option – B 6A. From way back when – O 7A. Like much toothpaste – M 8A. First, second or third, but not fourth – B Down 1D. Party game with accusations from 'villagers' – M 2D. Total legends – I 3D. Actor Nick on the Hollywood Walk of Fame – N 4D. The N.B.A.'s Pacers, familiarly – I 5D. Fail at stand-up – B Okay, onto the answers! Remember, spoilers ahead! Across 1A. 5x5 crossword – MINI 5A. Breakfast sandwich option – BACON 6A. From way back when – OF OLD 7A. Like much toothpaste – MINTY 8A. First, second or third, but not fourth – BASE Down 1D. Party game with accusations from 'villagers' – MAFIA 2D. Total legends – ICONS 3D. Actor Nick on the Hollywood Walk of Fame – NOLTE 4D. The N.B.A.'s Pacers, familiarly – INDY 5D. Fail at stand-up – BOMB Today's Mini 1-Across was so obvious that it wasn't obvious. I overthought it right away, wondering if there was a specific 5x5 grid where all the boxes were open that was called something specific. I quickly realized how silly this was and plugged in MINI. I was a little less certain of the next couple words and skipped ahead to MINTY. Then I turned to the DOWNs and plugged in NOLTE. From here I had enough letters filled in to start guessing at some of the ones I wasn't sure of. It took me 1:21 to solve this one, though I found it quite tricky at first. How did you do? Let me know on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook. If you also play Wordle, I write guides about that as well. You can find those and all my TV guides, reviews and much more here on my blog. Thanks for reading!
Forbes
10-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Today's ‘Wordle' #1482 Hints, Clues And Answer For Thursday, July 10th
How to solve today's Wordle. Looking for Wednesday's Wordle hints, clues and answer? You can find them here: It's Thor's Day again, which means Odin has his day yesterday, which also means that yesterday was Wordle Wednesday and I gave you a rather puzzling puzzle to solve prior to tackling the daily Wordle. I'll post the answer below. First, here was the puzzle: Five animals gather at a round table for their first Book Club meeting. They're trying to decide which author to read. Each animal has brought a snack. The animals are Bear, Porcupine, Otter, Fox and Owl. Each animal sits at a numbered chair, 1-5. The snacks they've brought are Pretzels, Cookies, Chips, Muffins and Fruit. The books they've brought are by Austen, Orwell, Tolkien, Shelley and Dostoevsky. Using the following clues, determine which animal brought which author and snack and where they're seated at the table. Here is a seating chart. 'Across from' or 'Directly across from' refers to any points connected by the lines. The Puzzle It helps solve this puzzle if you use the layout above and sort of fill in the blanks as you go. Each clue gives you a tiny piece of information and all of them combined provide you enough info to get to this final layout: The solution Seat #1: Porcupine — Tolkien — Muffins Seat #2: Owl — Shelley — Fruit Seat #3: Fox — Orwell — Cookies Seat #4 Otter — Austen — Chips Seat #5: Bear — Dostoevsky — Pretzels Nobody messaged me the answer to this so I assume it was just too much work. I promise, next week's will be easier. Now let's solve today's Wordle! How To Solve Today's Wordle The Hint: Nervous, fidgety. The Clue: This Wordle ends in a 'Y'. Okay, spoilers below! The answer is coming! . . . Today's Wordle Every day I check Wordle Bot to help analyze my guessing game. You can check your Wordles with Wordle Bot right here. This was a tough one! Even the Wordle Bot struggled. CHORE left me with 454 remaining words and STAIN only cut that to 35. I had exactly 0 green or yellow boxes, but that's true of the Bot as well. BULKY cut that number down to 15, which left me in a tight spot. So many very similar words remained. I went with DUMPY and that left me with just 1: JUMPY for the win. Thank goodness...I was getting a little jumpy! Today's Wordle Bot The Bot and I each get -1 for guessing in five and 0 for tying. Our July totals become: Erik: -4 points Wordle Bot: 6 points The word jumpy is an informal adjective formed from jump + -y, meaning 'apt to jump.' It originated in American English around 1889 to describe someone nervous, skittish, or easily startled—like someone ready to jump at any sudden movement. Let me know how you fared with your Wordle today on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook. Also be sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel and follow me here on this blog where I write about games, TV shows and movies when I'm not writing puzzle guides. Sign up for my newsletter for more reviews and commentary on entertainment and culture.
The Review Geek
03-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Review Geek
The Sandman – Season 2 Episode 2 'The Ruler of Hell' Recap & Review
Episode 2 Episode 2 of The Sandman Season 2 begins with Morpheus arriving in Hell only to find it empty. He is welcomed by a dejected and depressed Lucifer who assures him that they don't have any tricks up their sleeves. They go as far as to promise that within the bounds of Hell, they won't harm Morpheus. Curious, he follows along as Lucifer locks all the gates and has their wings cut off. Once they are out of Hell, the fallen angel then gives the key to Morpheus. He accepts it and realises Lucifer's plans too late. Lucifer never wanted to rule Hell, and inspired by Dream constantly leaving his realm, the fallen angel has quit Hell. All the residents of Hell have left, including Nada which means her location is now unknown. On top of that, Morpheus's life just got harder as he cannot let the key fall into the hands of someone reckless. Morpheus panics as he rushes back to the Dreaming. With Lucifer gone, every being hungry to rule Hell is after the key. He tries to palm it off to Death so he can focus on finding Nada. She refuses and reminds him of his first duty as the new ruler of Hell. He needs to retrieve all the demons and Hell's souls before they wreak havoc on the world. On cue, a bunch of beings show up, demanding the key. Morpheus decides to host a banquet and pick Hell's next ruler. Some notable attendees include Thor, Odin, Loki, Kilderkin, Chaos, Japanese sea god Susano-O-No-Mikoto and Azazel. Next arrive the fae ambassadors, Cluracan and Nuala. Every seven years, nine faeries are given to Hell as a tithe. They want Morpheus to stay as the ruler of an empty Hell. Nuala is upset as Morpheus continues with his diplomatic assurances. As they are led to the banquet, the Dreaming subjects acquiesce to every guest's wishes. From a secret gallery, Morpheus observes everyone reveal their true selves. Lucienne's first pick is Odin but Morpheus notes that he is reckless enough to bring his imprisoned trickster of a son, Loki. As expected, Odin wants Loki to trick Morpheus into giving them the key. But Loki claims his powers don't work on Dream in his own realm. Most of the guests think the best way to win Dream over is to bribe him. Lucienne's next pick is Azazel since he knows Hell best. It cuts to Azazel and his party engaging in sadistic acts. Thor is nasty with the female demon, Merkin and she puts him in his place. Nuala checks on her while Thor causes a scene. Morpheus steps in and ends the fighting. More guests arrive but they are the angels, Remiel and Duma who simply want to observe and report to God. Morpheus is nervous but his chef, Taramis, sees it as him having the upper hand. She deduces that even God doesn't know what to do or He would have taken the key. Everyone knows Morpheus will make the right decision. Soon, bribes are offered. Morpheus rejects Kilderkin's dream essence. Chaos threatens him. Susano-O-No-Mikoto makes a sincere pitch. Next is Odin who offers to find the missing Endless. He also reveals why he is desperate; he hopes to delay Ragnarok by relocating the giants and the dark elves to Hell. Following a gory show presented by Cain and Abel, Morpheus ends the banquet and sends everyone to their rooms. He also confides in Lucienne that he finally has two candidates. At the end of The Sandman Season 2 Episode 2, Azazel shows up in Morpheus' throne room. He offers Choronzon as revenge for challenging Morpheus in Season 1. When Morpheus rejects the gift, Azazel reveals that he has Nada. He brutally kills Choronzon and threatens to kill Nada the same way unless he gets the key. The Episode Review The Sandman Season 2 Episode 2 is another fun chapter and if this season continues the same way, the show can very well end with the legacy of having the perfect run. It seems that this adaptation has found a working formula and is sticking to it in every episode. Morpheus faces a challenge with a sprinkle of some existential philosophy or moral dilemma, the bad guys get involved but they aren't really bad and right when the problem is about to be resolved, there is a shocking cliffhanger. Along with it, we also get some exciting characters from folklore and myths in a new form such as the desperate Odin, a fae who is actually sincere for once, and the angry Japanese sea god who has changed. Lucifer's plan is a masterclass on revenge as well. Like Morpheus, viewers will be second-guessing Lucifer's every move till the other shoe drops. And the best part is that it cannot go wrong. No matter what decision Morpheus takes, Lucifer has won. But we do hope this isn't the last we see of the fallen angel. Previous Episode Next Episode Expect A Full Season Write-Up When This Season Concludes!
Local Germany
21-06-2025
- General
- Local Germany
Inside Germany: Midsummer traditions and an exodus of foreigners
Inside Germany is our weekly look at some of the news, talking points and gossip in Germany that you might've missed. It's published each Saturday and members can receive it directly to their inbox by going to their newsletter preferences or adding their email to the sign-up box in this article. Summer arrives Saturday, June 21st is the summer solstice, or the Sommersonnonwende which marks the official start to the summer season from a meteorological point of view. While Midsummer is not an official holiday in Germany like it is in Sweden or Finland, it is still a day of celebration for many - and as the longest day of the year, it offers a great opportunity for outdoor adventures and activities long into the evening. Christians in Germany may know the day as Johannistag, or St. Johns day, which was historically celebrated with the lighting of a bonfire and a big feast. Like so many of the big Christian holidays, St. John's Day can be traced back to pagan rituals. Germanic tribes thought that on the shortest night of the year Odin, father of the gods, came down to earth to bless its harvests. Later, after Christianity had spread far and wide in Germany, the seasonal celebration was shifted to focus on John the Baptist. But old traditions are hard to change and in many places pagan traditions didn't really end, so much as they were altered and woven into new Christian traditions. A decree issued in Nuremberg in 1653 gave people back the right to celebrate the occasion with bonfires and other superstitious activities meant to rid the town of evil spirits. Interestingly, St. John's Day marks the end of the asparagus growing season in Germany. So if you haven't had your fill Spargel yes, you'll want to get some soon. Another option for celebrating the longest day is with music and dancing late into the evening - many German cities have events planned for Fête de la Musique . Members of a musical group from Lombok, Indonesia perform for Fête de la Musique in front of the concert hall on the Gendarmenmarkt. Photo: picture alliance/dpa | Christoph Soeder Foreigners leaving Germany We reported Monday that a new study found that roughly a quarter of Germany's immigrant population is thinking about calling it quits and leaving the country . Of course, the flip side is that three-quarters of the population are not immediately thinking about leaving. The study found that more than half of those surveyed said they planned to settle in Germany indefinitely. Advertisement Still, one out of four immigrants wanting to leave does seem to be a pretty strong signal that all is not well for foreigners in the Bundesrepublik . Also interesting is the fact that most of those who want to go are skilled workers and people with high levels of education or job qualifications: exactly the kind of people Germany's leaders are hoping to attract in greater numbers. An IAB researcher told us that the far-right surge in the past election could certainly be a factor in the high number of people thinking of leaving Germany. She also noted the importance of removing structural barriers and accelerating and simplifying the processes involved with immigrating and settling here. Bye, bye, Germany: Foreign nationals cite various reasons for leaving the country. Photo: Pixabay While the government has taken some steps in that direction, the current federal leadership doesn't seem to be too focused on the retention of foreigners - skilled or otherwise. We've seen numerous examples of conservative Christian Democrat (CDU) leaders blaming foreigners for various domestic issues. We've also seen them take aim at rules meant to ease immigration and integration - including scrapping the three year fast-track path to citizenship and f amily reunification for refugees . Advertisement In case you missed it: For anyone who pays the radio tax (Rundfunkbeitrag ) manually, be aware that the collection office is going to stop sending payment reminders in the mail. You'll want to set up recurring reminders for those payments in your calendar, or else be slapped with late fees. Alternatively, just opt-in for direct deposit payments so you don't have to worry about it. Also German tax day is coming up, so if you need to file your taxes this year, you'll want to get started on that soon. Alternatively, if you file with a tax adviser you can feasibly put it off for another six to nine months. READ ALSO: The German tax deadlines to know in 2025 Lastly, the summer season also brings the end of the school year and the start of family vacations. We've rounded up the dates for school breaks around the country in case you want to avoid the crowds, or join them!
Yahoo
17-06-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Denmark Let Amateurs Dig for Treasure—And It Paid Off
Ole Ginnerup Schytz, an engineer in Denmark's sleepy Vindelev agricultural area, had used a metal detector only a handful of times when he found a bent clump of metal in a friend's barley field. He figured it was the lid from a container of tinned fish and tossed it in his junk bag with the other bits of farm trash that had set his metal detector beeping: rusty nails, screws, scrap iron. A few paces away he dug up another shiny circle. Someone had clearly enjoyed a lot of tinned fish here—into the sack it went. But when Ginnerup found a third metal round, he stopped to take a closer look. Wiping the mud from its surface, he suddenly found himself face-to-face with a Roman emperor. At that point he had to admit 'they weren't food cans,' Ginnerup recalls with a chuckle. After a brief intermission for an online Teams meeting for work that December day in 2020, Ginnerup dug up 14 glittering gold disks—some as big as saucers—that archaeologists say were buried about 1,500 years ago, during a time of chaos after ash clouds from a distant volcanic eruption created a miniature ice age. Four medallions feature Roman emperors, and several bear intricate geometric patterns. But the real showstopper is an amulet called a bracteate with two stylized designs: a man in profile, his long hair pulled back in a braid, and a horse in full gallop. An expert in ancient runes says she was awestruck when she finally made out the inscription on top: 'He is Odin's man.' These embossed runes are the oldest known written mention of Odin, the Norse god of war and ruler of Valhalla. Ginnerup's bracteate, which archaeologists describe as the most significant Danish find in centuries, extended the worship of Odin back 150 years—and it's all because Ginnerup received a metal detector as a birthday present from his father-in-law. [Sign up for Today in Science, a free daily newsletter] Many other European countries have prohibited or heavily restricted hobbyist metal detecting, but Denmark has embraced it, creating a system for members of the public to hand over finds to government archaeologists. The result has been an embarrassment of riches, with more than 20,000 items turned in annually in recent years. The curators assigned to identify and catalog the artifacts can't dream of keeping up, but the fruits of their collective labor are clear: whereas neighboring countries have only vague sketches of the past, metal detectorists have filled in the ancient map of Denmark with temple complexes, trade routes and settlements that would have otherwise been lost to history. 'Private detectorists have rocketed Denmark ahead of its neighbors in archaeological research,' says Torben Trier Christiansen, curator of archaeology at Denmark's North Jutland Museums. 'There's nothing 'amateur' about them.' Denmark has been inhabited since the end of the last ice age, when nomadic hunter-gatherers from southern Europe arrived following the migration of reindeer and retreating glaciers as early as 12,500 years ago. The ancestors of modern ethnic Danes showed up some 5,000 years ago, journeying from the steppes of what is now Ukraine and southwestern Russia. Their descendants lived in small farming communities across Scandinavia for thousands of years, building megaliths and barrows for their honored dead and making human sacrifices in bogs to appease their gods. In the early centuries of the common era, these farming communities coalesced into a series of Germanic tribes—the Cimbri, the Teutons, the Jutes, the Angles and the Danes—who became skilled seafarers, explorers and metalworkers. Because precious metals—including silver, gold and the components of bronze—do not occur naturally in what is now Denmark, its denizens had to barter for or steal these metals from abroad. They traded extensively with the Roman Empire, which never reached as far north as Scandinavia. By the ninth century, in the Age of the Vikings, Norsemen traded mainly in slivers of silver by weight, but they also had access to dirhams from the Islamic caliphates, solidi from the Roman Empire, and gold from the shores of Ireland, all of which have been found by their metal-detecting descendants. Denmark has been a unified kingdom since at least the 10th century, making it the oldest surviving monarchy in Europe. Metal detectors hit the Danish consumer market in the late 1970s. 'Before that, metal detectors were really just military equipment' used to find unexploded ordnance from World War II, Trier explains. Through the 1980s, metal detectors were so uncommon that most European countries didn't have laws to govern who could look for relics and where. But that all changed after some high-profile thefts demonstrated how much damage a bad actor with a detector could do. The Swedish island of Gotland became something of a battleground between professional archaeologists and looters—both locals and 'tourists' from abroad—who used metal detectors to find and plunder Viking Age sites, making off with many silver relics. The episodes soured Sweden on private detectorists for decades, Trier says. And beyond outright theft, many archaeologists believed they were destroying important archaeological context in a selfish desire to hold history in their hands. As Sweden drafted legislation to heavily restrict private metal detecting, one man decided Denmark already had a relevant law on the books—from 1241. Olaf Olsen, the director of the Danish National Museum in the 1980s, championed the idea that detection finds could fall under a medieval law that declared all precious metals without a clear owner the property of the crown. Olsen's interpretation of the Danefæ ('Danish treasure trove') law led to one of the most permissive approaches to metal detecting in Europe. Today anyone can metal detect in Denmark without a permit as long as they have the landowner's permission and agree to turn over any potentially historic finds to the government. It's a classically Danish system built on social responsibility—in a country where people regularly leave babies to nap outside in their strollers, it's no wonder the government trusts the public with treasure. It wasn't until about 10 years ago, though, that interest in metal detecting really surged, thanks to television shows and social media. In 2013 about 5,600 items were turned in for evaluation as potential Danefæ. By 2021 that number had skyrocketed to more than 30,000. That's a lot of nonarchaeologists digging holes. But in Trier's opinion, Danish archaeologists benefit from all these boots on the ground. About 60 percent of Denmark's landmass is dedicated to farmland, and much of that is tilled every year. Modern plows can reach more than half a meter into the soil, bringing a fresh slate of long-buried objects close enough to the surface for a metal detector to spot them. 'But once an artifact is at the surface of a field, it's going to be facing frost and sun and rain and the climate,' Trier explains. Then it's a race against time before the object is destroyed. Whatever is in Denmark's forests can safely wait another 200 years for professional archaeologists to get around to it, Trier says. But the detectorists walking plowed fields are the front lines of archaeological rescue operations. A prime example is a discovery known as the Vaarst complex. A private detectorist surveying a farm in northern Jutland found a concentration of jewelry—gold rings, dress pins and cloak clasps—so substantial that Trier mounted a rescue dig to stabilize whatever archaeological context had managed to escape the plow. Over the next two years Trier and a team of professional archaeologists uncovered a vast burial complex with hundreds of graves, many including human remains, their heads all oriented west toward the North Sea. Farming and erosion had eaten away at the topsoil for so long that only a few centimeters of depth covered many of the graves. 'One or two more seasons of plowing and they would have been gone,' Trier says. Just a kilometer away from the Vaarst complex is a modern town called Gudum. Historians had puzzled over the origin of the town's name, which translates to 'home of the gods.' Now, thanks to the detectorists' find, researchers believe it might have been the site of a major religious center. It's a big ask to expect the finder of a pristine ancient treasure... Detectorists hand over their artifacts to Denmark's 28 local archaeology museums—an astonishing number for a country one-third the size of New York State. It's up to local archaeologists such as Trier to designate sites of interest before they're destroyed by farming or construction and to identify and record the finds before they're passed on to the central Danefæ department at the National Museum. Trier says he has about 300 detectorists who regularly turn in finds to him. 'They can often tell even from a teeny sound the detector makes what kind of an object and how deep it is,' he notes. Some private detectorists have résumés that rival those of professional archaeologists. On an uncharacteristically sunny day in March, husband-and-wife duo Kristen Nedergaard Dreiøe and Marie Aagaard Larsen picked me up at a train station in southern Denmark, in an area north of the border with Germany. 'You know, people used to call this place the 'rotten banana' of Denmark,' Aagaard told me. But not anymore. The detectorist power couple's finds have revealed that the area where Aagaard grew up was an important hub of wealth and power 1,000 years ago. In 2016 Aagaard, Dreiøe and their friend the late Poul Nørgaard Pedersen discovered nearly 1.5 kilograms of Viking Age gold artifacts near the modern town of Fæsted, including armbands that archaeologists have interpreted as oath bands: twisted rings that would have been given by a chieftain or lord to his lieutenants to wear as a sign of their fealty. It's the largest hoard of Viking gold ever discovered in Denmark. But Aagaard and Dreiøe haven't let the gold go to their heads in the decade since. Quite the opposite: they show an unusual willingness to investigate every signal on their detector, even for iron. Iron is a perennial pest for detectorists. It elicits a loud, petulant scream from the detector and is almost always farm trash. Once detectorists become experienced enough to recognize this sound, most won't lift a shovel for it. Aagaard and Dreiøe's dogged digging, however, led them to discover a cache of more than 200 iron weapons—spears, lances, daggers and swords—in 2018. Subsequent excavations by the local archaeologist, Lars Grundvad, uncovered a series of temples used by what he calls a 'cult of destruction' starting around C.E. 0. They found evidence of at least 15 incarnations of the temple, each a few meters apart from the rest, spanning an estimated 550 years, Grundvad said. Many of the weapons seem to have been placed in support poles—whether as sacrificial offerings in the inauguration of a new temple or as a way of symbolically 'killing' the old one remains unclear. Fifteen temples 'felt very Indiana Jones,' Aagaard says. Looking back, Aagaard and Dreiøe laugh when they remember they considered taking up hunting or sailing as their joint hobby instead. The dig site I visited with Aagard, Dreiøe and Grundvad in March is in a field where grain is typically grown, just a stone's throw from a highway. On the horizon we could make out a suburban neighborhood, windmills—and a dolmen, a burial mound with large stones perched atop it, probably about 5,000 years old. The dolmen was already ancient by the time of the Vikings, Grundvad mused. The museum had rented a lime-green excavator for the occasion. A young tradesperson operating the digger painstakingly scraped layers of just a few centimeters of soil at a time from the surface of the ground over an area about the size of two basketball courts. Four metal detectorists, including Aagaard and Dreiøe, had taken the day off from work to participate. Supervised by a pair of local archaeologists, they followed behind the excavator as it crept through the plow layer toward what we hoped would be an undisturbed archaeological context. Just 20 minutes in, Dreiøe let out a triumphant whoop. The archaeologists and detectorists all gathered to see a Roman silver coin called a denarius cradled in his palm. 'Today is like my birthday, New Year's and Christmas in one,' Aagaard said. As the day wore on, about 10 more coins in bronze and silver, carefully labeled in individual baggies, accumulated in Grundvad's bucket of finds. But the archaeologist was more interested in a small, curved piece of bronze that Aagaard found: a fragment of a goblet or a pot the coins might have been buried in. The hope is that deep under the plow layer, there might be evidence of a settlement. Grundvad treats Dreiøe and Aagaard—who are, by trade, a sales manager and a psychologist, respectively—as colleagues. 'At first we wondered if they'd roll their eyes at us because archaeology is their job and our weekend hobby,' Aagaard says. 'But not Lars. He's one of the youngest and hippest local archaeologists.' Nearly every weekend during the detecting season, Aagaard and Dreiøe take their 'time machines' out in the field. They send snapshots of their discoveries to Grundvad for immediate identification. 'Not to sound arrogant about it, but we've gotten used to them bringing in extremely nice finds,' Grundvad said. In many ways, he credits Dreiøe, Aagaard and Nørgaard with putting his little museum on the map. It's a very different mentality than his colleagues in Sweden have, according to Grundvad. 'The Swedish authorities think that metal detectorists will destroy finds, take them out of their context. We think the finds are being saved.' The oldest wing of the National Museum, in downtown Copenhagen, is home to Denmark's treasure bureaucrats. It's up to the curators of the Danefæ department to identify the thousands of objects streaming in from the fields every year and decide which are worthy of joining the museum's research collection—and which will earn their finders a monetary reward. Even though detectorists can now upload photographs and GPS coordinates of their finds to a dedicated app, the curators' identification process remains much as it was 40 years ago. The best resources are thick reference books, their margins filled with hand-drawn diagrams and annotations from curators stretching back to the 1940s. With the breadth of objects that come across their desks, from flint-knapped stone tools and Bronze Age weapons to Viking jewelry, curators need an encyclopedic knowledge of Danish prehistory just to have a chance of knowing which book to reach for. Kirstine Pommergaard knows what style of brooch was popular in C.E. 300. She can tell whether a coin is a Roman solidus or a dirham of the ancient Islamic caliphates at a glance. 'You have to love items and the stories they can tell to be able to do what we do,' she says. Pommergaard is a curator of prehistoric archaeology and one of just three archaeologists in the country dedicated to identifying Danefæ full-time. As of 2025, there's a daunting backlog of more than 50,000 objects in a secret 'secure facility' awaiting evaluation. '[Each one is an] important piece of the puzzle, even if it's not made of gold or if we have 1,000 of them already,' she says. But what Pommergaard cherishes most are the items whose very existence reveals unforeseen connections. All the curators were dazzled when a detectorist turned in a solid gold ring set with a blood-red garnet. But Pommergaard, a self-professed craftsmanship nerd, became fixated on something many might have overlooked in the quest to figure out the origin of the ornament: the underside of the ring's setting. Four delicate curlicues that the goldsmith used to attach the shank to the head were a smoking gun for Pommergaard. This jewelry-making technique was exclusive to Frankish craftsmen living under the Merovingian dynasty, a royal dynasty that used marriage diplomacy to consolidate power across central Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire. Thumb rings with a similar construction have been found in the graves of high-status Merovingian women on the level of empresses and queens, Pommergaard says. Could the ring have been a spoil of war? The stone says otherwise. Although the Merovingian queens wore signet rings, red stones were a symbol of power among the Nordics. 'There must have been someone in Emmerlev who was important enough to marry one of their daughters off to,' Pommergaard says, referring to the hamlet nearest to where the ring was found. Before the discovery of the ring, Emmerlev was known only as the site of a cattle trade that operated in the 1500s. Pommergaard had dreamed of working with ancient items since she was seven years old, when she found half of a stone ax with her grandfather on the Danish island of Fyn. But what she probably didn't foresee—and what seems to be her least favorite part of the job—is being asked to put a price on the priceless. It falls to the Danefæ team to determine the finder's reward for each item chosen for the museum's collection. Most of the payouts are quite modest and far below what the objects might fetch on the black market—250 or 350 kroner (around $40 or $50) would be a typical finder's fee for a coin from the 12th or 13th century. But the blockbuster treasures can command eye-watering sums. Aagaard, Dreiøe and Nørgaard received just over a million kroner for the oath ring treasure, the equivalent of about $150,000. Ginnerup—the discoverer of the golden bracteate with Odin's name—declined to share how much he received for his hoard. 'The National Museum emphasizes not to talk about the money,' he says. Pommergaard says she isn't allowed to discuss how they decide the payouts, only that they consider an artifact's historical value and condition and the care the finder took in collecting it. Altogether, Danish detectorists received the equivalent of $1.3 million in 2023, up from just $130,000 in 2012. Technically the sky's the limit—the law doesn't stipulate a cap on Danefæ payouts. But the same can't be said of the budget for archaeologists to process the finds. Currently the average wait for an artifact to be processed by the Danefæ team is 'at least 2.5 years' once the object reaches their doors, according to Pommergaard, but that duration doesn't include the time the objects spend being evaluated at local museums, which don't receive dedicated funding for Danefæ. As local museums struggle to process the finds their detectorists turn in, they risk missing the opportunity to identify sites such as the Vaarst complex before they're lost to construction or the plow, Trier says. The long processing time also means some prolific detectorists have tens of thousands of kroner in rewards tied up in the system, sometimes for up to a decade. But archaeologists and hobbyists agree that detectorists aren't in it for the money. 'Hour for hour, we'd be better off picking up cans off the side of the road and turning them in for the recycling fee,' says Troels Taylor, a longtime detectorist based in Zealand. Nevertheless, 'we are grateful for our system where we get a little reward for the huge work and effort we do,' Taylor adds. Detectorists do want to know their finds are being examined and used for research, however. If not, they'd be happy to display them in their homes. It's a big ask to expect the finder of a pristine ancient treasure to turn it over to a government bureaucracy. Detectorists find ways to keep their favorite artifacts close to their hearts. Taylor, like many detectorists, has several tattooed on his body, including one image from a strap end he found of two stylized beasts that twist on his forearm. Other detectorists, such as the finder of the royal Emmerlev ring, hire metalsmiths and jewelers to make re-creations of their discoveries. The Danefæ program provides a tremendous return on investment from the perspective of the Danish government, Trier says. Private detectorists spend thousands of hours in the fields, and taxpayers pay them only when something extraordinary is uncovered. But simmering frustration with wait times risks upending the program. 'Our system is working really well, but it's only working because the detectorists feel heard—they feel that they are contributing and that we're actually taking them seriously,' Trier says. If processing times get any longer, however, he worries the program will stretch the detectorists' goodwill. 'The trust system only works as long as we archaeologists supply our part of the deal.' But many detectorists say that even if wait times ballooned, they doubt they'd ever be able to give up their hobby. 'As long as I can walk and dig holes,' Ginnerup says, 'I will continue with my metal detector.'
