The Mastermyr chest: a toolbox from about 1000

In October 1936 a plough opening new ground on Gotland, Sweden’s largest island, struck wood and iron. The field lay near Hemse and had never been ploughed before. The farmer working it, Hugo Kraft, was breaking land owned by Emil Norrby at Snoder, Sproge. What came out was a closed oak chest packed with more than two hundred tools and pieces of ironwork. The find is known as the Mästermyr chest, the largest tool find of the Viking Age in Europe.

The bog was a lake until 1902

During the Viking Age the spot was not farmland at all. The Mästermyr mire, west of Hemse, lay under a lake, and the mire was drained only between 1902 and 1910. About three decades later the plough reached soil that had never been turned, and the chest surfaced. It is on display in the Swedish History Museum in Stockholm, in the Vikings collection.

What the plough failed to break

The chest measures 90 cm (35 in) long, 26 cm (10 in) wide and 24 cm (9.4 in) high: rectangular, with a slightly curved lid and a flat bottom. It is oak, joined with a mortise and through tenon where the bottom meets the ends, and pegs holding the sides to the bottom and end pieces. The ends and sides are trapezoidal and slightly angled. Hinges and lock are wrought iron, the lock fixed to the front face. A chain of twenty-six figure-of-eight links was wrapped around the box, serving as an extra lock and as a handle, because the chest had grown too heavy for its original one. The plough roughed it up, and it stayed intact anyway.

Why was it in the water at all?

Most of the find had been packed inside, but not all of it. Three bronze cauldrons, three bells and an iron fire-grid lay in the ground around the chest. Two explanations are current. The first, the more likely, is that the chest and the loose pieces were loaded into a boat that capsized and sank in the lake. The second is that the chest was hidden at the water’s edge, meant to be retrieved, and never was.

Two hundred objects, one working kit

Counted item by item, the chest held over two hundred tools, finished pieces and works in progress. The striking tools run to seven: three sledgehammers, three hammers and one ball-peen. Four smaller anvils travelled with them, along with tools for making nails, three stamping pads, a punch, an ash-rake for the fire and two tripods. The woodworking side matches it: a large broadaxe, some smaller axes, a wide adze, a hand saw, a hacksaw, six spoon-augers, two drawknives, a chisel, a gouge, two knives, two bradawls and a spatula, plus files, rasps, sharpening stones, clamps and a steelyard balance. Every object there serves one of the few things a smith can do to a bar, and the first two moves are where a learner starts. The itemized inventory sits on the Wikipedia article, and it rewards a slow read.

Selected counts from the Mästermyr chest

Group of objects	Count
Hammers of all kinds	7
Anvils	4
Spoon-augers	6
Files and rasps	6
Saws, spare blade included	3
Sharpening stones	2
Pairs of tongs	2

Who carried a kit like this?

The contents sketch the owner. This was the working stock of a travelling craftsman who repaired things and produced new ones, and the tools show a smith who was also a carpenter, with some knowledge of locks, coppersmithing and coopering. Locks were a paying line: the chest held three padlocks, two keys, and springs, plates and other parts of several locks. The padlock design follows Roman models, and the same kind has come out of the excavations at Birka. Many of the tools resemble early Roman tools now displayed in German museums, the Saalburg among them. Roman expansion carried that technology across Europe, and trade carried it the rest of the way, out to an island in the Baltic.

How old is it, exactly?

A coin in the fill would have settled the question, and there is none. The tools come in a wide range of styles, there are no other chronological markers either, and an exact date has proved impossible. The find is dated by the broad label of the Viking Age, around the year 1000. That is the honest answer, and it is looser than anyone would like.

Tongs first, hammer second

Two pairs of tongs rode in the chest, one a large forging pair, and they deserve a pause. Tongs exist to grip and lift what is too hot to hold, and they are old: the earliest were probably wooden, bronze bars followed as early as 3000 BC, and an Egyptian wall painting from 1450 BCE shows a crucible held between two metal bars. Blacksmith tongs belong to the family with the pivot close to the gripping ends, the arrangement used for hard and heavy objects. A classical Jewish text, the Pirkei Avot, makes a riddle of the tool: a smith must use tongs to make a new pair of tongs, so the first pair must have been created by God, after the seventh day of rest. A thousand years on, the chest packs two pairs among its two hundred objects. How well tongs fit the work still decides what can be held at heat.

The chest is in the Swedish History Museum in Stockholm today, part of a Vikings collection running from about 800 to 1050, and it has a second life beyond the display case: enthusiasts in several countries are building replicas of the box and its contents, some using the same techniques as the originals. Find one of those builds and follow it in order, chain, lock, hinges, then the tools one at a time, and keep count of how many of the two hundred objects you can name a use for before the builder gets there.