A Little Silver from Tsar Nikolai
- Inka
- Sep 14, 2025
- 5 min read
Updated: Sep 15, 2025
Last week I was going to finish the dumping pit I had found, but on my way there I got distracted and searched elsewhere, so early this week I went to finally complete the pit.
After re-opening it, which took about half an hour, I checked the walls of the pit and found in what directions there were more metals.
I worked carefully, by scraping away soil and prying loose rocks with the bayonet. This way I slowly uncovered three more Juwel primuses and a rusted Heer belt buckle. Directly under a thick root from the crooked three above was the corner of a bakelite box sticking out, and next to it a corner of a metal box appeared.
Such moments are always super exciting. Sealed boxes really fires up the imagination. Sometimes they contain mundane items like spare parts, or simply just soil and roots. But naturally the imagination fills them with interesting personal things, coins, medals or uniform patches, weapons and even straight up treasures made of gold, amber rooms and magic unicorn hair.
This time both came up empty, as they are most of the times. The metal box had actually been destroyed before being tossed away, its lid had been broken off. Both of them had contained spare parts for the Einheitslanterne.
There were some other interesting garbage there too. A canteen, a K98 ammo pouch, a field torch and two wallets plus a lot of coins.
Later that evening when I was back home I went through the coins and found that two of them were silver coins from Russia. 10- and 20 Kopek from 1915 and 1910.
That evening a friend of me, Stian, one of the Finmarkfront diggers, called and said he was passing through and wanted to go searching. So the next morning I met up with him in the gebirgsjäger camp, ready for a day in the woods.
The day began slow as we moved through a rather empty part of the forest, but soon enough we had found a spot with a lot of signals around.
We dug up some rifle casings, parts from vehicles and buildings, bottles and handgrenades, nothing to put in the backpacks.
That changed a few meters ahead. There we walked into a small river bank full of signals. I dug up a food tin but Stian suddenly reacted like the ground was giving him an electrical shock.
The words he uttered next cannot be translated and should not be written online anyway, cos the northern norwegian swearing can be pretty hefty, and Stian masters it. He had obviously found something good!
When he was ready to share the find he held in his hands like a trapped frog, he showed me a beautiful RAD (Reich Arbeits Dienst) cap badge! A really good find, the lucky bastard.
The next hour we dug like heroes, but unfortunately the rest of it were food tins, bottles and rubbish.
When we had made a big loop through the forest and were getting closer to the parking place we found a large dug out. It was empty except that in one of the corners there were indications of some metals.
I proceeded to dig up a huge amount of leather bits. Leftovers of shoes and leather equipment that had been cut up to be used for something else, only god knows what.
There were also remains of a uniform jacket there, and the only piece of metal was an empty gas mask canister.
On Friday I had the day off and I went to one of my sites I have wanted to cross off my list for a while now.
Some years ago I had begun excavating a signal in a earthen bunker filled with stones. I had found the bottom of a box, but because of the large rocks I hadn`t been able to free it.
Now I had armed myself with an old Wehrmacht crowbar to help me pry loose those rocks.
At the site I turned on the detector and searched my way towards the bunker. Next to it I found another bunker I somehow had missed the last time. There was a strong signal from the middle of it so I just had to dig that up first.
Ten centimeter down I found what looked like the edge of a metal crate.
In this bunker there were no rocks, so it was a quick and easy job.
It was not a box, but a vehicle engine/compartment heater. In quite good condition, perhaps the best one I have ever found.
Together with it were several other bits; a food tin, a horsebrush, a part probably from an engine, made by Bosch, and a karbid lamp.
Now I was ready to move rocks. It took a while, and it was heavy, but the crowbar really helped and after half an hour I could pull an empty fuse cabinet out of the ground. Under it was a large mouse nest, and no other metal.
I strolled through the forest, picking up a few rifle casings and cream tubes along the way, towards the rests of a barrack on the other side of the little forest.
There I swept the detector a bit and found several strong signals.
The first one was a cluster of something one could imagine finding in a lazarett, three bed heaters and a pee jug, and also two enamelled lids for kettles. So maybe it had been the camps lazarett barrack.
Between the collapsed rocks that had made up the foundation of the building the Fisher picked up on a aluminum signal. I had to flip a rock over and found a piece of trench-art under it!! It was one part of a cigarett case, and it had a name engraved with cyrillic letters.
I looked around for the other piece, but couldn`t find any matching signals anywhere around, but under another rock pile was another good signal.
The rocks wouldn`t budge, and I had left the crowbar on the other side of the woods together with the other finds, so I tried to move the rocks using my bayonet. It has worked before.
This time the blade broke like if it was named Narsil !
My trusted old Swedish M96! I have used it since I began this hobby more than ten-fifteen years ago. The blade has become dull and rounded from all the digging. I am going to frame it and put it into the collection.
And order a new one.
Frustrated I called it quits. It was getting late anyway, so I decided to bring the crowbar over on another occasion to check that last signal.
The rest of the weekend was spent together with the GirlfriendWife. Yesterday we picked Blackcurrant, one of the tastiest berries, and made jam from it. We also harvested Fireweed leaves, and produced enough tea from them to keep us through the winter, and we made pine tea and dried herbs from the garden.
Today we grabbed our bikes and went for a 13-14 km mountain trip to do some recce after a rather large mountain camp, but that is a tale for another day, all I`ll say at this point is that it was great and my legs are super soft now.
Thanks for reading. I wish you an awesome week.
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