The Story Of The Runde Treasure
On the 19th of January 1725 the Dutch merchant ship Akerendam set sail from Texel outside of Amsterdam with course to Batavia in Indonesia. The ship was loaded with trade goods and money to be traded for spices and other valuable goods in the far east. In total the ship had a crew of 200 and carried 19 chests with coins in gold and silver.
To avoid pirates in the English Channel the crew decided to sail Akerendam north of Scotland, but the ship lost it course because of a terrible snow storm.
On the morning of March 8th 1725 the people of Runde witnessed pieces of the wreckage floating in the waterfront. In the following days the inhabitants found remains of the wreckage and dead bodies scattered over large areas around the island. All 200 aboard perished.
Almost 250 years later, on the 16th of July 1972, two Swedish and a Norwegian sport diver found some coins and one of the cannons from Akerendam in the bay south-east of Runde. Over the next three weeks they salvaged almost half a ton coins in gold and silver. The finders got 75% of the treasure, Norway got 15% and Holland received 10%. The Norwegian cut of the findings was split between Myntkabinettet in Oslo and Bergen Sjøfartsmuseum.
