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 …
Finds from the ice are sometimes handed in to us, even though they are found outside our county jurisdiction. This is a direct consequence of the national media attention that our work in Oppland gets. When we receive the finds, we make sure that we note all the relevant information, such as GPS-coordinates and a …
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 …
When the storm broke and the temperature dropped, the six men and their packhorses were exposed to the full force of winter in the high mountains. They had no chance. What were they doing in the high mountains in the middle of the winter? Surely, they must have known that it was risky? Sources tell …
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 …