On September 28, 2006, the third team focused on the Lendbreen and Åndfonne ice patches. The team, which included Per Dagsgard – the finder of the Viking spear, began their work at Lendbreen. They uncovered several artefacts, including a Medieval horseshoe and an arrow. One find, a small, hook-shaped wooden object, was a mystery at the time.
We now know that this object is linked to the traffic of packhorses passing through the area. Interestingly, the actual pass at the top of the ice patch didn’t melt out until five years later, so we had no knowledge of it in 2006! 🏔️ (Post 5/9)
Starting in late August 2006, mountain hikers reported incredible finds from the Søre Dalfonn ice patch: three arrows (including the one pictured, which dates to AD 300-600), an arrowhead, parts of shoes, a horseshoe, scaring sticks, and other artefacts.
When archaeologists and local helpers visited Søre Dalfonn on September 28, 2006, no new discoveries were made. This was likely due to the small size of the ice patch and the fact that local hikers had already carefully searched the area in the previous weeks, collecting and handing in their finds to the local museum. 🏔️ (Post 4/9)
(Photo: Vegard Vike, Museum of Cultural History)
As the big melt continued in 2006, mountain hikers started reporting amazing finds of artefacts emerging from the retreating ice. Just 11 days after Reidar’s discovery of the Early Bronze Age shoe at Langfonne, we sent out three survey teams to investigate some of these reported sites. September 28, 2006 became the start date for organised glacial archaeology in Innlandet.
One of the teams, including Reidar, returned to Langfonne and made an extraordinary series of finds: nine arrows, two arrowheads, a flag from a scaring stick, and two pieces of post-medieval textile. We had never seen anything like it—and it wasn’t until the Secrets of the Ice team revisited Langfonne in 2014 that we’d see such a concentration of arrow finds again. Radiocarbon dating later revealed that one of the arrows dated back to the Late Neolithic! 🏔️ (Post 3/9)
Reidar kept hiking back up to the Langfonne ice patch to look for more finds during the big melt of 2006. His perseverance paid off in a huge way on September 17, when he discovered an ancient shoe made of rawhide. Later that year, radiocarbon dating revealed it was from 1,300 BC, the Early Bronze Age! This discovery left us stunned. Reidar’s find made us realize that something both exciting and unsettling was unfolding in our high mountains. His shoe find became the spark that ignited glacial archaeology here in Innlandet County. ❄️ (Post 2/9)
(Photo: Vegard Vike, Museum of Cultural History)