Discovery of Golden Horns of Gallehus

The Golden Horns of Gallehus were two ornate drinking horns made of gold, found near the village of Gallehus in southern Jutland, Denmark. They date from the Germanic Iron Age, around the fifth century CE, and were decorated with figures of humans, animals and symbols that have been interpreted as scenes of ritual or myth. One of them bore an inscription in runes, in the Elder Futhark alphabet, which is among the best-known runic texts and gives the name of the maker. The first horn was found by a young girl in the seventeenth century, and the second in the eighteenth. Both were stolen from the royal collection and melted down in the early nineteenth century, so that today only replicas and old drawings survive.

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