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Submitted via IRC for Bytram:
Legend holds that King Arthur's reign was foreseen by an enchanted lady in a lake, who granted him the sword Excalibur. By the same rules, Saga Vanecek, an eight-year-old Swedish girl, is now on a divine path to rule a great kingdom after she discovered a 1,000-year-old sword in a lake.
The sword may be Viking in origin and could date back to Arthurian times, in the 5th or 6th centuries, according to experts at the Jönköpings Läns Museum. That its discoverer is literally named Saga is further proof that this is the stuff of legends.
Vanecek found the rusted weapon over the summer while swimming in Vidöstern Lake in Småland with her family. "I felt something with my hand and thought it was a stick, and then I lifted it up and it had a handle that looked like it was a sword," she recounted in an interview with the Swedish news site Värnamo Nyheter.
"Then I lifted it up and shouted at Dad: 'Daddy I found a sword!'"
Girl pulls ancient sword from lake
An eight-year-old found a pre-Viking-era sword while swimming in a lake in Sweden during the summer.
Saga Vanecek found the relic in the Vidöstern lake while at her family's holiday home in Jönköping County.
The sword was initially reported to be 1,000 years old, but experts at the local museum now believe it may date to around 1,500 years ago.
"It's not every day that you step on a sword in the lake!" Mikael Nordström from the museum said.
The level of the water was extremely low at the time, owing to a drought, which is probably why Saga uncovered the ancient weapon.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Saturday October 06 2018, @02:24AM (4 children)
Rot is one thing - most living things do better in warmer temperatures(up to a point). I hadn't heard that it had much effect on the rate of chemical oxidation though, at least not over the narrow temperature range of liquid water.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Saturday October 06 2018, @02:45AM (1 child)
I'm sure I can find some interesting articles on the subject pretty quickly:
http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1996-05-12/features/1996133022_1_lake-superior-great-lakes-lakes-shipping [baltimoresun.com]
https://listverse.com/2013/04/23/10-shipwrecks-frozen-in-time/ [listverse.com]
https://clevelandmagazine.com/in-the-cle/articles/this-shipwreck-may-be-lake-erie's-oldest [clevelandmagazine.com]
Of course, temperature isn't the only factor to be considered. Depth, oxygen content of the water, turbulence, and temperature all work together to decompose or to preserve an artifact.
It may seem less dramatic, but consider your refrigerator. A gallon of milk, left at room temperature, can be expected to be spoiled within a day or two. That same milk, maintained at 32 or 34 degrees F can be expected to last for a couple weeks. Microorganisms continue to do what they do to the milk, but at reduced temeratures, they are much slower.
Reduce the temperature, and at the same time, reduce the oxygen content, and you see a much more dramatic result. The mineral content of the lake may contribute to preservation - I have absolutely no information on the lake in which this sword was found.
Further above, people discussed the preservative effects of surface oxidation. If we knew the mineral content of the lake, we might see how that surface oxidation was enhanced by free floating minerals.
This is a science, in and of itself. Suffice to say that articles like those I've cited exist because shipwrecks can be preserved for amazingly long times, when all the conditions work together.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Saturday October 06 2018, @03:10AM
Again you're referring to microbial life - rot and decay - responding to temperature. No argument here. But also, little to do with chemical rusting.
The chemical content of the water though, certainly. Especially if it contained something that created some sort of "oxide alloy" that slowed further oxygen exposure. I suppose even just very anaerobic conditions would slow oxidation.
Hmm, and now I'm reading that there actually are some bacteria that oxidize iron. Huh. Okay, maybe you're right about that being a potentially major factor
(Score: 3, Interesting) by maxwell demon on Saturday October 06 2018, @05:46AM (1 child)
From what I remember of my chemistry in school, chemical reactions indeed go slower in cold temperatures; the rule of thumb was that ten degrees Celsius give a factor of two in reaction speed.
However the lake obviously got warm enough for people to go bathing in it, so I doubt that temperature alone can explain preservation during more than a millennium.
However I guess mud forms an extra protective layer.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by fritsd on Saturday October 06 2018, @09:12AM
That's right, the Arrhenius equation [wikipedia.org]
If you go bathing in a Swedish lake, and you don't wait until August when the water has warmed up, you'll still turn light blue from the cold.
We once went swimming, and noticed that all the adults were sun-bathing in chairs next to the lake. They didn't go in, only the kids.
Maybe more of that lake evaporated this year, because of the heat wave? That would explain how she could swim in shallow water,
that would normally be deep enough that the sun doesn't penetrate and it stays cool for centuries. (Just guessing here)