About 200 A.D., a high-ranking Germanic warrior was slain in battle somewhere in modern-day Denmark. When the battle was over, his killers stripped off his precious coat of mail armor, painstakingly made by hand from nearly 20,000 tiny iron rings. Then they threw it in a bog as a sacrifice to their gods in exchange for victory in battle.
Known as the Vimose coat, the 22-pound piece of armor was discovered by archaeologists near Vimose, Denmark in the late 19th century. The armor is nearly complete, preserved by unusual low-oxygen conditions in the bog.
