Ötzi the iceman is the holy grail of glacial archaeology, nothing less. The discovery of the 5300-year-old mummified body and the associated artefacts created a media frenzy and great public interest. Today, 250,000 people visit the Ötzi Museum in Bolzano each year to get a glimpse of Ötzi and the exhibited artefacts. A wealth of …
We have published a new scientific paper, this time in the Journal of Field Archaeology! In earlier publications, we had focused on the radiocarbon dates of the finds and on two of our most interesting sites (Lendbreen and Langfonne). However, the mountain ice is now melting in many places around the world. The time has …
We have found the best-preserved pair of skis from prehistory! Back in 2014, the Secrets of the Ice programme found an exceptional pre-Viking ski, 1300 years old, at the Digervarden Ice Patch in Norway. The ski was complete, including the binding – one of only two skis from prehistory in this condition. Ever since, we …
The lost Viking mountain pass that melted out of the Lendbreen ice patch was a fantastic and baffling discovery. The discovery made headlines around the world, but it also raised questions. Who were the travellers going through this high mountain pass and where were they going? To gain an answer, we realised that we would …
For years, we kept the identity of one of our ice sites hidden, referring to it as our “secret arrow site.” The reason for the secrecy was that it contained a treasure trove of arrows. In fact, it is the ice site in the world with the most arrows, and by a large margin. Doing …
Mountain glaciers are retreating due to global warming. Surprisingly, this creates a boon for archaeology. Incredibly well preserved and rare artefacts emerge from melting glaciers and ice patches in North America, the Alps and Scandinavia. A new archaeological field has opened up – glacial archaeology. The archaeological finds from the ice show that humans utilised …
One member of the Secrets of the Ice team is not a professional archaeologist. Reidar Marstein is a hobby archaeologist from Lom. Why is he a core member of the team? Well, there are a number of reasons for that, but the main reason is that without him, glacier archaeology here in Innlandet would have …
«He’s there, he’s right there”. The archaeologists stood back in shock and awe. Nothing had prepared them for the encounter with the Victorian seaman from the lost Franklin expedition, buried in the frozen ground in the Canadian High Arctic. It was like he had just died. We take a closer look at the investigation of …
The use of skis for wintertime transport and hunting goes back into the mists of prehistory. The further we go back, the more uncertain and intriguing the story becomes. Mysteries abound. Where did skiing start? Siberia, the Altai Mountains, Scandinavia or somewhere else? The experts disagree. Were skis invented independently in more than one place …
We recently published a study of our ice finds in Innlandet. The story made its way into major news media, including National Geographic. A number of posts in the comment sections to the news stories observed that the artefacts are lying on the ground. The commenters somehow inferred that this means that global warming is fake news. This is nothing …