“Can you believe it! We have just found an incredibly well-preserved arrow with a crayfish arrowhead. Looks like it went missing last year, but the arrow is around 3600 years old, from the Early Bronze Age! It doesn’t get much better than this” reads the joyful message from the Secrets of the Ice team on Facebook. The whole pila is about 70 cm long. Photo: Espen Finstad, Secrets of the Ice, Innlandet County Municipality – Hjertepumpa kicks things up a notch The arrow was found under control of the ice edge at a known discovery site in the north-east of the Jotunheimen mountain area. Espen Finstad is a glacier archaeologist in Innlandet County Municipality. He was there when the arrow was discovered on Wednesday this week. – The heart pump kicks up a few extra notches when you see that there is an arrow shaft lying there. Here we quickly saw that it was a rare type, which was extremely well preserved. Finstad has helped find several arrowheads in its time. He believes the arrow they found on Wednesday 13 September is extremely well preserved. In the picture, he brings in findings of 1,500-year-old scarecrows from the mountain. Photo: Julian Post Melby, cultural history museum in Oslo The Secrets of the Ice team has been doing glacial archeology in Innlandet since 2006. Secrets of the Ice is a collaboration between Innlandet county council and the Museum of Cultural History in Oslo. They have found a couple of hundred arrows from prehistoric times. This is the fourth arrow they have found of this type. In total, only eight such arrows are known nationwide. – But this is clearly the best preserved. The degree of preservation is absolutely exceptional, says Finstad. Here we see the back end of the arrow as it lay when it was found. The back end of the shaft, where the string used to be, is reinforced with animal center and fists – and probably with birch bark as glue. Photo: Espen Finstad, Secrets of the Ice, Innlandet County Municipality The same archaeologists also previously found an arrowhead made of mussel shells in the ice in Jotunheimen. It is also probably over 3,500 years old: Made of mussels – The arrowhead is made of river mussels. This is the fourth arrow we have found made from it. There are a total of eight known discoveries nationwide. Elsewhere in the world, river mussels are only known to be used in North America, says Finstad. In this case, it is not only the arrowhead that is well preserved, but also the organic material with wooden shafts and lashings has remained well. Finstad says that this gives them a completely different insight into how things were done in prehistoric times. The discovery site right at the lower edge of a very melted ice sheet in East Jotunheimen. Photo: Espen Finstad, Secrets of the Ice, Innlandet County Municipality The discovery has attracted a lot of attention and is of international interest. Finstad says they are not finished with the search and do not rule out that they may find more things. The ice on the glaciers is melting more and more and ancient things are constantly coming to light. – The discoveries we make on the ice generally get older and older every year. The ice is melting fast due to climate change. Now it is the really old ice that is melting, says Finstad. In Lom, Norway’s oldest shoes have also been melted down. Three years ago, archaeologists found the skeleton of a dog between Lom and Skjåk. The 3,400-year-old Stone Age shoe was found in Jotunheimen in 2006. The shoe was size 39 according to modern standards and probably belonged to a hunter. Photo: klimaparken2469.no
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Archaeologists found a well-preserved arrow with a river mussel arrowhead in the ice in Jotunheimen – news Innlandet – Local news, TV and radio
