A man went out on a morning walk in southwest Norway and stumbled upon a surprise: an elite warrior's sword scabbard that was purposefully buried 1,500 years ago. The rare gold object, which was richly decorated with serpentine animals, was probably an offering to the gods at a time of famine and societal turmoil, researchers say.

"I saw a mound in the ground under a tree and poked at it with a stick," the hiker said in a translated statement from the University of Stavanger in Norway. "Suddenly, I saw something that glittered. I didn't quite understand what I had found."

"The odds of finding something like this are minimal," Håkon Reiersen , an archaeologist at the University of Stavanger Archaeological Museum, said in the statement.…