'Spectacular' artefacts found as Norway ice-patch melts

Related: Crossing the ice: an Iron Age to medieval mountain pass at Lendbreen, Norway (Antiquity)

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Source: The Guardian

'Spectacular' artefacts found as Norway ice-patch melts

Discoveries exposed by retreating ice include snowshoe for horses and bronze age ski

Esther Addley
Thu 16 Apr 2020 07.00 BST

The retreat of a Norwegian mountain ice patch, which is melting because of climate change, has revealed a lost Viking-era mountain pass scattered with “spectacular” and perfectly preserved artefacts that had been dropped by the side of the road.

The pass, at Lendbreen in Norway’s mountainous central region, first came to the attention of local archaeologists in 2011, after a woollen tunic was discovered that was later dated to the third or fourth century AD. The ice has retreated significantly in the years since, exposing a wealth of artefacts including knitted mittens, leather shoes and arrows still with their feathers attached.

Though carbon dating of the finds reveals the pass was in use by farmers and travellers for a thousand years, from the Nordic iron age, around AD200-300, until it fell out of use after the Black Death in the 14th century, the bulk of the finds date from the period around AD1000, during the Viking era, when trade and mobility in the region were at their zenith.

Described as a “dream discovery” by glacial archaeologists, the finding was also a “poignant and evocative reminder of climate change”, said James Barrett, a medieval and environmental archaeologist at the University of Cambridge, who has been working with Norwegian archaeologists on the project since 2011.

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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/apr/16/spectacular-artefacts-found-as-norway-ice-patch-melts

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Source: CNN

Melting glaciers reveal lost mountain pass and artifacts used by Vikings

By Ashley Strickland, CNN
Updated 2303 GMT (0703 HKT) April 15, 2020

(CNN) — The retreat of melting glaciers has revealed a lost mountain pass in Norway -- complete with hundreds of Viking artifacts strewn along it, according to a new study.

Researchers first discovered the pass in 2011 and have been examining it, and the artifacts that have been revealed as more ice melts, ever since. Dating the objects helped them reconstruct the timeline of when this pass was used and its purpose.

The new study published this week in the journal Antiquity.

In recent years, climate change has caused mountain glaciers to melt away, revealing well-preserved markers from different periods in history beneath. This is what happened in Lendbreen, Norway.

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Read more: https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/15/world/viking-mountain-pass-norway-scn/index.html

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Source: Antiquity

Volume 94, Issue 374April 2020 , pp. 437-454

Crossing the ice: an Iron Age to medieval mountain pass at Lendbreen, Norway

Lars Pilø (a1), Espen Finstad (a1) and James H. Barrett (a2) (a3)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2020.2 Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 April 2020

Abstract

Mountain passes have played a key role in past mobility, facilitating transhumance, intra-regional travel and long-distance exchange. Current global warming has revealed an example of such a pass at Lendbreen, Norway. Artefacts exposed by the melting ice indicate usage from c. AD 300–1500, with a peak in activity c. AD 1000 during the Viking Age—a time of increased mobility, political centralisation and growing trade and urbanisation in Northern Europe. Lendbreen provides new information concerning the socio-economic factors that influenced high-elevation travel, and increases our understanding of the role of mountain passes in inter- and intra-regional communication and exchange.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/crossing-the-ice-an-iron-age-to-medieval-mountain-pass-at-lendbreen-norway/F6C3FDBC94AD652EF4D2E79ED1697F1A