Young girl pulls 1,500-year-old sword from lake, earns 'Queen' nickname

An 8-year-old girl made a fantastic discovery playing in a Swedish lake: A pre-Viking era sword. Saga Vanecek, a Swedish-American girl, pulled the 33-inch sword from the bottom of the lake, held it up in the air and declared "Daddy, I found a sword!" she told Swedish news website The Local. A drought had lowered the lake's water level near her family's vacation home in southern Sweden, the BBC reports.

That sword, made out of wood, leather and metal, could have been made 1,500 years ago, experts say. "It is the first sword of its kind to ever be found in Scandinavia," her father Andy Vanecek said on Facebook, who is also left to wonder who first owned the weapon. "Did someone fall overboard, or through the ice during a winter trek? Was a wealthy noble buried in the lake, as from a scene in Game of Thrones?"

Vanecek grew up in Minneapolis and moved to Sweden just last year, The Local reports. She's a Minnesota Vikings fan, making the find all the more sweet. Some have also started calling her the new "Queen of Sweden."

The sword is now being kept at Swedish museum in Jonkoping County, the BBC reports, and a local council is combing the lake for more historic finds.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2018/10/05/girl-pulls-1500-year-old-sword-sweden-lake-queen/1532031002/