People Keep Pulling Swords From Underwater, So Salvation May Be Near

A little while ago, we were talking about the legend of King Arthur, drawing out a sword to prove he’s worthy of being king. He pulled Excalibur from a stone, say some tales. Or he got the sword from a lake. These might also have been two stories about two unrelated swords of Arthur’s, though they’re both referred to as Excalibur in some tellings.

This is why we get very excited every time we hear someone has discovered a sword underwater. In 2017, we got the story of a seven-year-old girl in Britain who pulled a 4-foot sword out of a shallow lake. It sounded like an amazing story, though details were slim on just how old this sword was and from which ancient British people it originated. Then some guy came forward and revealed he’d thrown the prop blade there just a few decades previously. He’d bought it for LARPing and then sent it into the lake as a sacrifice to the Celtic gods.

Okay, that wasn’t so magical. But in 2021, some random diver found a sword from the Crusades off Israel's Carmel coast. This sword actually did survive the authentication process, with experts declaring it 900 years old and likely the property of some deceased Crusader knight. This sword was in “perfect condition,” said reports, so long as you call a sword totally covered in crusty sea life as being in perfect condition.

In 2018, an eight-year-old girl found a sword in a lake. That sounds like one of the stories we just told you, but no, this was a different girl and a different lake, Vidöstern Lake in Sweden. And this time, the sword was legit, a 1,500-year-old Viking sword. A drought had lowered the lake’s water level, making the sword slightly easier to spot.

The girl was named Saga Vanecek, which is obviously the name of an epic hero. Inexplicably, rather than letting her keep the sword to slay foes, authorities moved it to a museum, though they did reward her with $1,600. That all happened exactly four years ago this week. The time has now come for Saga to raid the museum and reclaim the sword. Once she does, no one will able to stop her, unless of course they are armed, with a slightly better sword.

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