London, April 5 : Archaeologists have discovered about 470 rare Viking-age silver Arab coins that date from the 7th to 9th century, at an early Iron Age burial site near Stockholm in Sweden.

According to a report in BBC News, the burial site is near Stockholm's Arlanda airport.

The discovery was made when a team from the Swedish National Heritage Board had just started removing a stone cairn at the site.

"We suddenly found one coin and couldn't understand why it was there," said archaeologist Karin Beckman-Thoor. "We continued digging and found more coins and realised it was a Viking-age hoard," she added.

According to Beckman-Thoor, the coins were left there in about AD 850.

"Such Viking hoards usually come from Gotland - a large Swedish island in the Baltic Sea," she explained.

"No Viking was buried at this site - the grave is older. Maybe the Vikings thought the hoard would be protected by ancestors," Beckman-Thoor added.

Vikings had settled in a village nearby.

The Vikings traveled widely in their longships in the Baltic region and Russia from the late 8th to the 11th Century. They are known to have traveled as far as North Africa and Constantinople (now Istanbul).

ANI