First Reliable Evidence of £15B ‘Lost’ Treasure Trove Discovered

Copyright, Belters News.

A group of amateur archaeologists have unearthed what could be the first reliable evidence of the existence of the world’s largest and most valuable undiscovered treasure trove.
The discovery of a 10th-century axe is said to “very strongly support” the possibility that the fabled ‘Lemminkäinen Temple’, and the priceless hoard it is thought to contain, is real.
According to Scandinavian folklore, the Temple lies in the bowels of a Finnish cave and is home to generations of pagan riches.
It is said to contain “mountains” of gemstones, gold, and rare antiquities with a conservative value of at least £15billion.
The cave’s entrance and limestone passageways are said to have been filled with mud and clay in the Middle Ages to protect the Temple within from Christian crusaders.
Its treasures, which are said to lie in a series of interconnected chambers 50ft below the surface and 150ft from the entrance, have remained undisturbed ever since.
Proof of its existence has been elusive despite a decades-long effort by international treasure hunters and several hundred professional excavations.
But a group of 12 “stony broke” friends could now be on the verge of hitting the jackpot after finding an ancient axe head inside the mouth of the cave.
The tool, which was buried in a mound of granite rubble and clay, is thought to be around 1,000 years old.
While its wooden handle has long since rotted away, its anatomy and metallic composition is said to “perfectly reflect the type of axes used by Vikings in that period of history”.
Its location is also said to lend “firm weight” to the notion that the cave was purposefully filled-in by hand and not by the natural build-up of silt over the centuries.
The pals, dubbed the ‘Temple Twelve’, have no archaeological training and have spent the last 37 years – and more than 100,000 hours – removing mud and rock from the cave in the hope of accessing its main chamber and striking lucky.

Originally armed with little more than plastic buckets and spades, they have each spent up to six hours-a-day, seven days-a-week, digging through the labyrinthine cave complex near Helsinki.
The team devotes each summer to the backbreaking task while living on earnings from seasonal work across the rest of the year.
If the axe head leads to the discovery of the hoard, each of its 12 members—who have not made a penny from their toils to date —could pocket up to £1.25billion.
Historian and author Carl Borgen, the world’s leading authority on the Lemminkäinen Hoard, has been in regular contact with the Temple Twelve since their excavations
began in 1987, and is one of only a handful of ‘outsiders’ they confide in.
His book ‘Temporarily Insane’ chronicles their quest and gets its name from the group’s “blinkered, often dangerous obsession”.
Speaking yesterday from his home in Amsterdam, Holland, Borgen said: “The group’s discovery is very certainly the first real evidence of the existence of the Temple.
“It is my understanding that the axe is of Viking origin and that its presence in that part of the cave, buried as it was under rubble and clay, very strongly supports the story that access to the Temple was blocked to prevent access to the Temple below.
“It is no exaggeration to say that The Temple Twelve are chomping at the bit to get started again this summer and to make the breakthrough we’re all hoping for.”
The hoard is believed to lie within the labyrinthine Sibbosberg cave system close to the coastal resort of Gumbostrand, 20 miles east of Finland’s capital, Helsinki.
Its alleged existence first emerged in 1984 when a local landowner Ior Bock (doub-corr) claimed that his family – one of the oldest in Scandinavia – were direct descendants of Lemminkäinen, a prominent figure in Finnish pagan mythology.
Bock said the cave, which was located on his sprawling ancestral estate, was home to the Lemminkäinen Temple where the collected treasures from countless generations of ancient Finnish pagans had been stored.
References to the temple have appeared in Finnish folklore dating back nearly three thousand years.

Tens of thousands of jewels, ancient artefacts, and life-size gold statues of Lemminkäinen himself had been stashed in several interconnected chambers over thousands of years, he said.
According to Bock, the cave’s treasures were hidden by local pagans in the 10th-century to protect them from invading Christian armies from neighbouring Sweden.
Its mouth and passageways are said to have been filled with mud and the entrance to the temple’s chambers sealed with huge stone slabs.
Bock’s aged family line—the Boxström—had been keepers of the secret, and guardians of the cave’s treasures, since then.
Bock, who never married or had children, revealed the temple’s existence to The SKS Archives in Helsinki, which documents the oral and written cultural heritage of Finland, to ensure its untold story would not die with him.
By 1987, news of the so-called ‘Bock Saga’ had spread worldwide and the possibility of finding the temple’s entrance had attracted the attention of historians, corporate sponsors, and professional archaeologists.
It also captured the imagination of amateur treasure hunters, who flocked to the site in search of gold and glory.
Among them was a group of 24 “likeminded strangers”—12 men and 12 women—who joined forces with Ior Bock to become the site’s first and only permanent, self-funded excavation team.
Since that time, most of the original party have left or died, including Bock himself, who was murdered by a personal assistant in 2010.
There are now a dozen members, two of whom were part of the original 24. Their number has been maintained across the years with new members from Finland, Sweden, Norway, Holland, Germany, Australia, Russia, and the United
States.
The ‘Temple Twelve’, as they have become known, camp nearby and spend each summer hunting for proof that Bock’s claims of an undiscovered ancient civilisation were true.

Using rudimentary tools, the group has so far removed several four-tonne blocks from the cave’s entrance and have excavated around 400 tonnes of sediment below it.
But the inclement Finnish weather means the digging season is confined to the summer months before the cave starts filling with freezing rainwater.
The group pumps out more than 1.5million litres of water annually at the start of every season.
During the last season of digging, two of the group – Johan Rikberg, 40, and Marcus Lundqvist, 44 – spotted an axe head in the mud, 14metres inside the entrance of the cave.
It is thought to have been dislodged and brought to the surface by the water pumps.
The tool weighs 713g, is about 20cm in length, and is made with the “sparing” use of iron.
Based on the size of its central ‘eye’, it is believed to have had a wooden handle roughly two feet long.
It is “exactly” the style, weight, and metallic composition of other Viking axes of the period, and as there were no Finnish Viking settlements, is assumed to have been obtained by the local pagans through trade.
And according to the Temple Twelve, it proves Bock’s story.
Photographs of the axe were revealed for the first time yesterday by the group’s historian, Carl Borgen.
He said: “I spoke to Johan and to Marcus shortly after the made the discovery, and there is now absolutely no doubt in their minds that the Temple and its riches exist.”
The Temple Twelve are now planning to “put everything they’ve got” into clearing the remaining silt and locating the temple’s chambers.
This should be easier this year, they say, thanks to a donation of dynamite.
When digging resumes this summer, the team is confident that the narrow window—between late May and mid-September—will be “easily sufficient” to reach the temple entrance.

The axe is now being scientifically examined and dated by Museovirasto, the Finnish Heritage Agency. Their findings are expected within three years.