After five days of fieldwork in the beautiful southern Jotunheimen mountains, our team has hiked out today.
This season’s work in the area brought exciting results: We recovered more pieces of the unique Viking Age packhorse net. We documented three new sites with archaeological finds.
The ice patches here are generally small, and many may not even hold a permanent ice core. That likely explains why the wooden artefacts we find are not as well preserved as those from some of our other sites. Still, every find adds valuable pieces to the puzzle of past human activity in the high mountains.
As for what comes next – it all depends on the weather. If more snow falls, the ice will remain hidden. But if conditions open up again, we will be ready for more fieldwork. ❄️⛰️...
Bitingly cold today! The wind has shifted, bringing a sharp chill to the mountains and dusting the high peaks with snow. In South Jotunheimen, we were greeted only by a gentle snow drizzle, leaving our survey area lightly touched and allowing our work to continue uninterrupted. ❄️🗻...
Team 1 surveyed an ice patch we had identified on aerial photographs, and it has now produced its first artefact: a small piece of wood found near the snow edge. The object is too poorly preserved to tell its original function, but it can still be radiocarbon dated. That will give us a time marker for when people were here.
The ice patch is small and holds no visible old ice, only snow. It may not even contain a permanent ice core – but even the smallest sites can preserve traces of past human activity....
For the first time this year, our field crew are wearing helmets whenever the terrain calls for it. Here they are at the find spot for the newly discovered pieces of the Viking Age packhorse net – with helmets firmly in place. ⛑️❄️ Check out the steep ice wall behind them.
Why now? Rockfalls are on the rise. Some stones are melting out of the ice itself, while others break loose from the mountain sides as permafrost thaws or during increasingly heavy downpours.
Better safe than sorry – only by staying safe can we continue uncovering the stories hidden in the ice....
