A discovery straight out of a King Arthur legend recently unfolded in Norway, where a hiker unearthed a 1,500-year-old gold sword fitting hidden beneath a tree. The news was announced on May 5 by the University of Stavanger, a public university in Norway . The artifact was found in the Austrått district of Sandnes, a city in southwestern Norway. It dates to the sixth century, during Norway’s Migration Period, a turbulent era of upheaval following the fall of the  Roman Empire . The anonymous hiker, who lives in Austrått, said he “like[s] to explore and get to know the local area.” After noticing a tree felled by a storm, the man — a father of two — began probing the ground beneath it. “I saw a slight rise in the soil under the tree and poked at it with a stick,” he said, according to the release. Annette Græsli Øvrelid/Museum of Archaeology, UStavanger/Cover Images Getty Images “Suddenly I saw something gleaming.…