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Archaeologists are finding mysterious ancient objects on Norway's
melting glaciers. Take a look.
Morgan McFall-Johnsen
Tue, February 25, 2025 at 2:16 AM PST5 min read


102

Archaeologists are finding mysterious ancient objects on Norway's
melting glaciers. Take a look.
Norway's melting glaciers are revealing objects from the Stone Age, Iron
Age, Medieval, and Viking eras.

Some ancient artifacts are mysteries, but they still indicate trade
routes through the mountains.

Here's what Norway's glacial archaeologists found in the meltiest part
of last summer.

Mysterious and fascinating artifacts are surfacing on melting glaciers
across the planet.

From ancient human remains to strange wooden tools and statues, these
objects are drawing archaeologists into the high, frozen mountains each
year.

Norway is at the forefront of this emerging field of research, called
glacial archaeology. With about 4,500 artifacts discovered, the country
claims more than half of the planet's glacial archaeology findings,
according to Espen Finstad, who co-leads the Norwegian program, called
Secrets of the Ice.

Archaeologists there are piecing together clues about ancient industries
and trade routes across the glaciers.

They just had one of their best field seasons yet. Here's what they found.

People have trekked over Norway's glaciers for thousands of years to
sell and buy goods.

white and black dog and six people dressed in warm mountain gear
carrying packs and equipment hike across a snowy plain with mountain
peaks in the distance
Espen Finstad leads a team of archaeologists on a three-hour hike to a
dig site.Andreas Christoffer Nilsson, secretsoftheice.com
Ancient hunting, travel, and trade routes crossed the mountains between
the Norwegian coast and inland areas since the Stone Age.

"We are lucky that some of these trade routes have gone over ice,"
Finstad told Business Insider.

Objects that ancient travelers left behind were frozen into the ice for centuries rCo until recent decades.

wood sticks bent in an oval and bound with spokes of ropy material sits
in the snow next to a ruler showing it's about 500 cm across
A 1700-year-old horse snowshoe was found on the ice at Lendbreen.Glacier Archaeology Program
As humans have burned fossil fuels for energy, releasing heat-trapping
gases into the atmosphere, global temperatures have been rising for
decades. Glaciers everywhere are melting, releasing the ancient
artifacts preserved inside them.

Some of these objects look familiar, like this mitten.

ancient muddy rough-fabric mitten held in the palm of someone's hand
An ancient mitten, which looks just like a mitten.Johan
Wildhagen/Palookaville
Others, like this whisk, are quite different from what we know today.

hand holding a long piece of wood with a sharp pointy end and four
prongs at the top against a snowy background
Yes, the archaeologists believe this was a whisk.Innlandet County Municipality, Secrets of the Ice
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The Lendbreen ice patch is the most fruitful site the archaeologists visit.

vast patch of ice on a mountainside in black and white photo above a
later color photo of the same ice patch about one-third smaller
The Lendbreen ice patch in 2006 (top) and 2018 (bottom).Espen Finstad, secretsoftheice.com
"There are so many treasures in the ice there," Finstad said.

Lendbreen was a common travel route during the Viking and Medieval eras.
The archaeologists go there almost every year.

In the summer of 2024, heavy melting meant lots of new discoveries.

dirty grey long patch of ice on a mountainside with a whiter strip of
snowy ice below
The Lendbreen ice patch as it looked when the team arrived on September
3, 2024.Espen Finstad, secretsoftheice.com
"The melting really came rapidly at the end of the season," Finstad said.

Finstad's team of about seven archaeologists visited nearly a dozen
sites across the mountains to search for artifacts.

man wearing green jacket and mountaineering hat laying on his stomach in
a field of rocks admiring and lightly touching his fingertips to a long
thin wooden arrow shaft lain across the rocks against a background of
snow and mountains
A team member admires a freeze-dried arrow shaft.Glacier Archaeology
Program, Innlandet County Council
At Lendbreen, they used pack horses to bring gear up to the site and set
up their camp.

three stocky horses loaded up with gear and saddle bags with a person strapping something onto the packs on one horse's back in a rocky
high mountain landscape
Packhorses help the archaeologists bring gear to their study
site.Innlandet County Municipality, Secrets of the Ice
They stayed there about nine days, Finstad said.

Their findings included "two of the best-preserved arrows we ever
found," Finstad said.

ancient rusty arrow laying on frozen rocky landscape under a foggy sky
A 1300-year-old arrow as it was found lying on the ice at the Lendbreen
ice patch, Innlandet County, Norway.Espen Finstad, secretsoftheice.com
One of them was just lying on top of the ice, waiting to be found.
Usually there's a little excavation involved, but the archaeologists
simply picked this arrow up.

"It's very seldom to find them that well preserved on the ice. So it was
kind of a gift. It was very beautiful," Finstad said.

Arrows are abundant in the glaciers because reindeer hunting was "almost
like an industry" in the Iron and Medieval Ages, Finstad said.

a dozen reindeer run down a snowy slope in the mountains
Reindeer move to the ice and snow in summer to avoid botflies. This
provided an opportunity for ancient hunters.Glacier Archaeology Program, Innlandet County Council
People hunted for their own food, of course, but also to sell in a market.

Arrows can hold clues about past societies.

researcher in warm clothing holds up an ancient arrow and arrowhead on a
rocky mountainside
A member of the Secrets of the Ice team holds an Iron Age arrow shaft
and its arrowhead.Espen Finstad, secretsoftheice.com
For example, some arrowheads found on the glaciers have tips made from
river mussels that must have come from far away, cluing researchers in
to just how far people were traveling and trading over the ages.

Some of the prehistoric arrows Finstad's team found last season were so well-preserved they still had fletching.

disheveled old feathers laid on a white surface beside the notched end
of a stripped ancient wood arrow shaft
A 1500-year-old arrow found at the Storgrovbrean Ice Patch with
preserved fletching.Museum of Cultural History
Fletching is delicate and doesn't usually last thousands of years. These
were rare findings.

Some items they find are just "strange," Finstad said.

hand holding a small long wooden object with long straight vertical
grain. one end of the object is rounded and the other is jagged and uneven. Archaeologists found this small wooden object on the Lendbreen pass.
They don't know what it is.Kathrine Stene, secretsoftheice.com
Small bits of wood, leather, and textile are often impossible to identify.

Finstad estimated they had found about 50 such mysterious, small objects
at Lendbreen in 2024.

dark wet twisted hide cloth laying on rocks
An object of leather or hide with visible seams, possibly a shoe, found
at Lendbreen.|yystein R|+nning Andersen, secretsoftheice.com
"It's all kind of small things, daily life things from the Viking Age or older, which you don't find in other archaeology contexts at least in
Norway, because it's gone. It degrades," Finstad said.

Heavy snow cut off the archaeologists' efforts rCo but now they know where
to look this summer.

rusty orange-speckled rough horseshow fragment curved in a person's
hands above a pile of rocks
A medieval horseshoe found on the Lendbreen ice patch.May-Tove Smiseth, secretsoftheice.com
"We are excited to go back," Finstad said.

Read the original article on Business Insider

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FrankB
1 hour ago
The earth was warmer than today during the Eemian period some 122,000
years ago. That warmth wasn't due to humans burning fossil fuels, and
yet sea levels were 20 to 25 feet higher than they are today. Warmer
climates and much higher sea levels were completely normal and natural.
Humans invented the notion of a Goldilocks climate that is but a
fleeting period between natural extremes.

John
1 hour ago
Everyone needs to open their eyes to the United Nations IPCC hustle and
see what they did to corrupt the temperature change graph all the way
back to the early medieval period. The Medieval Warming Period and the
Little Ice Age were removed to make the temperatures after 1880 (when temperatures were first recorded in detail) look more dramatic. The temperature changes between 1000 - 1200 AD were higher than they are
now. Current temperature monitoring stations are also in hot zones;
these are in or around urban areas where thererCOs quite a bit of concrete
and blacktop that causes heat reflection. Those who drank the KoolAde; congratulations.



Schr||dinger's Platypus
1 hour ago
Very interesting article and subject matter.

Norway, and Scandinavia as a whole have a fascinating history.

Reading this reminded me of something my Norwegian grandmother used to say.

"It takes a Viking to raze a village."


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