An outbreak of anthrax in Siberia in 2016 caused the death of a 12-year-old-boy, hospitalization of scores of other people and the death of more than two thousand reindeer. The outbreak was traced back to an old reindeer corpse, which had melted out of the permafrost during what was the warmest Arctic summer on record. …
It was a stormy night at the Lendbreen ice patch. The noise from the wind and the meltwater rushing down the ice was deafening. I had nearly fallen asleep, when I heard the sound of the zipper for my outer tent. It was Elling. “My tent is down. You are getting company!” Elling Utvik Wammer …
The glaciated mountain pass at Lendbreen has given us a number of great finds, such as an Iron Age tunic, a Viking Age mitten and dead packhorses. In addition to these unique finds, the site has yielded a variety of artefact groups. One such group of artefacts is the subject of this blogpost – fifty-seven small …
The famous reindeer hunter Jo Gjende was out hunting on the Memurubrean glacier in Jotunheimen. To his great surprise, he met a local farmer carrying a saddle on his back. Upon enquiring, the farmer told him a sad story. The farmer had lost his horse to a crevasse. The unlucky animal was stuck in the …
I am in my office. The phone rings. I answer the call. It is Elling on a bad cellphone line. All I can hear are bits of excited words, with shouts of joy in the background. Then the line clears: “There are hundreds of them. Hundreds!” The field crew had found a new site with a large number …
How do glacial archaeologists know the dating of artefacts found in the ice? There are a number of dating techniques available to archaeologists. We use two main dating techniques in glacier archaeology – typological dating (the shape of the artefact) and radiocarbon dating. Typological dating Typological dating used to be the only available absolute …
We are back at the office in Lillehammer after a week of great fieldwork at our favourite site in Jotunheimen. This site just never ceases to amaze us. The number of arrows recovered here is simply staggering. This must be a world record for ice sites! The first arrows were found here in 2006, but there was …
We just got excited texts from the field! They have found what appears to be the remains of an ancient wooden sledge. The discovery was made not far from where the 1300 year old ski was found two years ago. It is broken into pieces, but maybe it is possible to put it back together …
The Reinheimen ski is one of the most important finds made by the Glacier Archaeology Program in Oppland so far. Archaeologist Runar Hole from Lesja was hired by the Glacier Archaeology Program in 2014. His task was to visit potential sites at ice patches in the Dovre and Lesja municipalities. One of the places with …
The time of the start of snowmelting and the summer temperature is of great importance for the conditions in the field for the glacier archaeologists. 2015 saw a late snowmelt and a cold summer in Oppland. The result was that there was no melting of old ice in the high mountains that year. In contrast, 2016 saw an …