Lendbreen ice patch, which was later to become our most famous site (https://secretsoftheice.com/news/2020/04/16/mountain-pass/), appeared in the finds record for the first time in 1973, when a Viking Age arrowhead was discovered there. The report of the arrowhead found at Lendbreen sent young student Per Dagsgard on an artefact hunt at the ice patch in 1974. He made an incredible discovery – a complete Viking Age spear in front of the ice patch (https://secretsoftheice.com/news/2017/11/29/spear/).
It is interesting to note that Dagsgard also reported other finds from Lendbreen (such as sled remains and scaring sticks) in his letters to the museum, to which he got no response. Maybe the archaeologists thought these objects were of a more recent date. If they had checked up on these finds, the glacial archaeology of Innlandet could have started 30 years earlier than it did.
This is the fifth post in series on the slow trickle of archaeological ice finds from Innlandet County, Norway, prior to the big melts in the 2000s.
Photos: Olav Heggø and Vegard Vike, Museum of Cultural History.
Two arrows and an iron arrowhead were found near Mount Storhøi in Lesja municipality during the very warm summer of 1937. Archaeologist Bjørn Hougen at Universitetets Oldsaksamling, the archaeological museum in Oslo, wrote about the finds at the time:
“One day in August 1937, hotel owner Michael Thøring from Lesja and his twelve-year-old son were in the mountains and ascended Mount Storhøi on the steep northern side where people rarely go. When they were about 20 minutes from the top, the boy spotted the cleft iron arrowhead (…). It lay on the bare rock near a stream and about 100 meters from the nearest snowdrift. Shortly after, the father found a long and surprisingly well-preserved arrow shaft with an accompanying bone tip lying loose beside the shaft (…). It also lay on bare rock near a stone. 20 meters further down, they found another arrow (…); this one was equipped with an iron tip and was stuck diagonally into the ground - a clear reminder of a missed shot from a distant past. The distance from these two arrows with preserved wooden shafts to the glacier was about 500 meters.”
Hougen wondered if all the arrows had lost during the same hunt, but we can say now that this is not the case. The arrow with the bone tip was radiocarbon-dated by us to be 2000 years old, while the arrow with an rion arrowhead is 1300 years old. The forked arrowhead in the picture is from the Viking Age. As is usually the case with ice patches, the finds are accumulations over time, not from a single event.
This is the second post in a series on the trickle of archaeological ice finds from Innlandet County, Norway, prior to the first big ice melts in the 2000s.
Photo: Kirsten Helgeland, Museum of Cultural History.
The first ice find from Innlandet County was a large Viking Age arrowhead discovered in 1935 in front av the Smørrstabbreen glacier in Jotunheimen, in an area newly exposed by melting. There was no arrow shaft mentioned in connection with this find but this should not surprise us. Smørrstabbreen is a large, moving glacier, so the fragile shaft was likely crushed in the ice, while the iron arrowhead was preserved by its greater internal strength.
This is the first post in a series on the trickle of archaeological ice finds from Innlandet County, Norway, prior to the first big ice melts in the 2000s.
(Photo: Olav Heggø, Museum of Cultural History)
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