The Lemminkäinen Hoard, a secret stockpile of gold, gems, and ancient artifacts that could cost up to £15 billion ($20.4 billion), is on the verge of being unearthed by a team of treasure hunters.
Search For the Treasure Hoard
The treasure is said to include approximately 50,000 gemstones, including rubies, sapphires, emeralds, and diamonds, as well as not less than 1,000 artifacts dating back thousands of years, making it the greatest and most precious collection ever uncovered.
It is said to include many 18-carat gold life-size human sculptures, all of which are said to be hidden under the vast Sibbosberg cave system 20 miles east of Helsinki, Finland's capital.
Despite repeated official expeditions and the efforts of more than 100 professional treasure hunters from across the globe, the hoard, supposed to be deposited in an underground temple in Sipoo, has remained illusive for three decades.
However, after 34 years and over 100,000 hours of diligent digging, a group of 12 "penniless" colleagues named 'Temple Twelve' thinks they are just meters away from the treasure. They intend to enter the cave next summer.
The 'Temple Twelve' started the search in 1987 and have devoted their summers to uncovering the treasure ever since, digging into the labyrinthine cave complex near Helsinki for six hours a day, seven days a week.
The team, which includes people from Finland, Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, Australia, Russia, the United States, and Germany, is really multinational and has no archaeological background.
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History of the Hoard
In a book Temporarily Insane, historian and author Carl Borgen, the world's greatest expert on the Lemminkäinen Hoard, chronicles the Temple Twelve lives and their fortune.
So far, the Temple Twelve, as they are called, have been able to clear the cave of hundreds of tonnes of smaller rocks and sand, as well as remove six big square granite blocks obstructing the cave's entrance, Borgen said speaking from Amsterdam - his home.
The rumor of the treasure's existence began around 1984 when local landlord Ior Bock claimed that his ancestors were direct descendants of Lemminkäinen, a well-known character in Finnish history.
According to Bock, who was assassinated by a personal assistant in 2010, the room on his huge estate was blocked off in the 10th century with massive stone slabs to keep invading Swedish and Swiss troops out of the valuables inside.
Since then, his family had become the "guardians of the cave," causing Bock to expose the temple's existence in order to guarantee that the temple's unwritten history would not die with him, thus commencing the "Bock Saga."
In 1987, Bock brought together a group of 24 "like-minded strangers"- 12 men and 12 women - to form the site's first and only permanent, self-funded excavation crew.
Despite the fact that at least half of the original 24 died or retired 34 years after the excavations began, two of the original 24 remained.
No Hard Evidence of the Hoard Found
The Temple Twelve think they have the determination to discover and remove the massive granite slabs from the temple entryway, despite the fact that no tangible proof of the hoard has been discovered.
The gang has removed multiple four-tonne rocks from the cave's entrance and dug about 400 tonnes of material below it using primitive equipment such as shovels and buckets.
The crew is optimistic that when digging continues next year, they will be able to reach the cave entrance between May and September.
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