Trench-Art Lappland Shield
- Inka
- 16 hours ago
- 5 min read
Updated: 13 minutes ago
Today the GirlfriendWife and I went on a short recce trip to a forest. We wanted to scout it for berries and old war junk.
It was a couple of well spent hours in the nature, even if we came up short on both relics and the tiny fruits.
There were some signals to dig on, a few items from the war time, and lots of rubbish discarded by campers in the 1970`s and 80`s.
Of the items from the interesting era I dug up some food tins and a smashed up Swedish produced field telephone central of some kind, and I found a ditch for another day where at least one large stove awaits excavation.
As I was checking a good zink signal the GirlfriendWife claimed she heard noises of a moose heading towards us. I couldn`t abandon what could be an erkennungsmarke underground, so I dug as fast as possible only to drag out a rotted accumulator.
The noises persisted so as we tried to get an eye on the moose we saw what was really causing the commotion. A beautiful yellow headed Three-Toed Woodpecker. It was a really nice nature experience to end the week with.
A few days before we had made a longer trek to another camp, and there we actually spotted a moose when we were leaving the site. Not more than 40-50 meter from the forest road something caught my attention, and as I stared in between the trees I suddenly saw it clearly. A large moose. Very well camoflaged. And it was looking right back at us, so we got to burn some extra calories getting out of there.
We had spent many hours in the camp. She was playing around with a new camera, while I was running around digging signals.
The first signal I opened was a whole bunch of spent igniters for mines, ZZ35s and ZZ42s.
Other than that I mostly dug food tins, small tins, some cream tubes, and I found one Danish coin and the top part from a 3kg pionier charge.
We ate dinner in the forest, hot tomato soup, with tea after, despite being swarmed by this seasons last wave of bloodsuckers, and were having a very nice day.
I began this weeks search in the slope in the filtration camp from last week.
The first thing I found there was a tent peg laying on the surface, in a surprisingly good condition. Next was an unusual find. A small but well marked part from a Red Army binocular, with all the color still intact. It would have been so cool if it had been complete.
While I was searching for the rest of the binocular I found a Marschgetränk tube along with a lot of medical cream tubes and some toothpaste ones as well. All dumped together. I love such pre-sorted relic dumps.
I took my time in the slope, trying to not miss scanning even an inch of it. Impossible of course. The vegetation was fairly dry, and the weather good, so it was quite enjoyable.
All the garbage coming out of the ground I piled up near my backpack so I could take it with me and throw it in a dumpster on my way home.
Together with more creamtubes was a pair of Maskenbrillen. The glass were missing from it, but it had all the original laquer.
As I was sitting next to the stream on the bottom of the slope, checking another signal, I turned my head to a movement in the sideview, and it was a large Heron taking off. An amazing sight!
A very good signal filled me with excitement, and I nearly had a drip when I saw the perfectly white corner of a license plate, and the beginning of an embossed black letter! I carefully uncovered the rest of it wondering if it would be a Heer or Luftwaffe plate, or even an SS one!?
It gave me a good mix of laughter and disappointment when I was holding the first two letters of a broken modern norwegian license plate. It was the first modern item I had found in the slope though.
Under a large rock I had to dig deep to get to the cause of a signal the detector had given. A food tin was laying as deep as my arm was long, and when I had it on the surface I saw it was filled with coins! Very exciting.
It was several Danish coins, from 1924 to 1943.
Just next to the rock and the coins came another good noise from the metal detector. A typical food tin-signal, just that it was something far, far better than a food tin this time, although prehaps made from one.
It was a Lappland Shield! A handmade "trench-art" example! How sick! I had never imagined I would dig out one of those. But the GirlfriendWife had said a day or two before "I bet there will be a Lappland shield there".
I wonder if it had belonged to the same guy who buried the coins there. And to save you some time,: No, it will not be for sale, it is for the museum.
When my heart rate was more or less back to normal I got up on my legs and continued in a dreamlike state, sweeping the detector in front of me.
It found me a pair of keys, a lightbulb, another igniter, a second Soviet binocular part and an ashtray with "Norge" and a vikingship.
I also dug up a handmade tool, either it was used as a soup stirrer or for smashing the dust off blankets and uniforms.
It had gotten late so I moved towards the car, but along the way I dug up another two tent pegs, more cream tubes and then I felt my heart jump again. I held a large shield shaped aluminum part, with holes along its edge.. Did I dare hope for it to be another handmade shield? I dared.
Slowly I turned it over, just to discover it was all blank and I realized it was something that had been used to patch- or repair something. But it was a fun and heart racing moment.
All the nice nature moments, and that one find, made this week spectacular. I wanted to spend more days searching, but I had to let the finger I injured a few weeks ago get some rest as it probably needs that to heal properly. But crossing the other fingers for a good next week.
Thanks for reading! Keep Smiling ;)
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