"A team of treasure hunters who claim to be ‘on the brink’ of finding the world’s biggest stash of gold have been inundated with people wanting to help them.

The ‘Lemminkäinen Hoard’, a mythical trove of gold, jewels and ancient artefacts, is said to be worth up to £15 billion and hidden in an underground temple in Finland.

Some 50,000 gemstones and at least 1,000 antiquities dating back thousands of years are also said to be in the temple in a subterranean cave network about 20 miles east of Helsinki.

In November, a dedicated team of diggers known as the ‘Temple Twelve’ announced they were just metres away from discovering the temple’s entrance.

Since then, the group say they have received thousands of enquiries from people wanting to join their ranks or lend a hand.

The Lemminkäinen Hoard first hit headlines in 1984 when a local landowner, Ior Bock, claimed his family were direct descendants of Lemminkäinen, a prominent figure in Finnish pagan mythology.

He alleged a cave on his sprawling ancestral estate was home to the fabled Lemminkäinen Temple where the collected treasures of countless generations of Finnish pagans were said to be stored."
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