Case file · Folklore / legend
Saint Kinga's ring and the salt of Bochnia
Legend says the Hungarian princess Kinga threw her ring into a salt shaft in Hungary before marrying the Polish prince Bolesław, and that miners at Bochnia later found it in the first lump of salt dug there.
1248 CE · 49.97, 20.43 · status: legend
The account
Rock salt was found at Bochnia around 1248, and the Bochnia and Wieliczka mines became the richest source of revenue of medieval Poland. Kinga, canonised in 1999, is the patron of salt miners, and an underground chapel in Wieliczka is carved entirely from salt in her honour.
The sceptical view
A pious legend attached to a real economic discovery; contemporary documents record the salt, not the ring.