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A bronze sword dating back at least 2,700 years has been found in a forest near the city of Gdańsk in northern Poland. The weapon, which is well preserved beneath a green patina, was discovered by a local amateur detectorist.
The find was confirmed by the Provincial Office for the Protection of Monuments (PUOZ), which dated the sword to the fifth and final period of the Bronze Age in Europe, around 900-700 BCE.
After the discovery was reported on Monday, staff from the office’s archaeology department recovered the sword together with its finder, Marcin Wiśniewski, who said that he had taken steps to protect the artefact from the rain and other people after coming across it the day before.
In a social media post, Wiśniewski wrote that, having first found a vodka bottle cap then beer cans and shell casings that morning, he initially thought the latest signal from his metal detector was another can.
Only when he dug in his spade did he realise that he had stumbled across something significantly older and more valuable: a sword lodged vertically and firmly in the ground.
“When it occurred to me what I’d found, believe it or not, tears flowed,” he wrote. “Incredible! Someone once stuck it in the ground for some reason and so many years later I am holding it, beautifully decorated, with a beautiful patina, chipped, but that only adds to its charm.”
The sword would have been “an unimaginable expensive item” at the time it was left in the ground, worth as much as a herd of cows, noted Poland’s state forestry agency, Lasy Państwowe, which administers the site where it was found.
The provincial conservator will now decide which museum the sword will end up in, said a spokesperson for the monument protection office, quoted by Radio Eska.
“There will be no shortage of museums keen to adopt this treasure,” they added. Once safely rehoused, the sword “will be conserved, beautifully decorated, and we’ll certainly be able to see it”.
Similar Bronze Age items were found in the forests a century ago, according to PUOZ. Two antenna swords – so-called because of a pair of ornaments on their hilt – were sent to the Provincial Museum in Gdańsk (at the time the Free City of Danzig), but then disappeared during the war.
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A number of swords and similar implements of varying ages and provenance have been found in Poland in recent years.
Last week, the discovery of a 1,000-year-old sword in a river in western Poland was announced. The item, which had been well-preserved in the water, dates back to around the time when the House of Piast, Poland’s first ruling dynasty, was present in the same region.
Last summer, a fisherman pulled a medieval sword out of the Vistula river amid record low water levels, and a 2,000-year-old Roman sword was discovered in southern Poland in early 2025.
Another medieval sword, possibly of Viking origin, was found in a river in 2024. Last year, a well-preserved wooden sculpture of a human face, dating back 1,000 years, was found at the bottom of a lake.
A well-preserved, 1,000-year-old sword has been found in a river in western Poland.
Experts have dated the item to around the time when the House of Piast, Poland’s first ruling dynasty, was present in the same region https://t.co/jIhJbTmJeA
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) June 15, 2026
Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.
Main image credit: Pomorski Wojewódzki Konserwator Zabytków/Facebook
Ben Koschalka is a translator, lecturer, and senior editor at Notes from Poland. Originally from Britain, he has lived in Kraków since 2005.
