Melting ice and observant park ranger lead to 1,500-year-old hunting tool in Norway
Some melting ice in Norway and an attentive park ranger led archaeologists to find a 1,500-year-old hunting tool. Photos show the ancient wooden artifact.
A team of glacial archaeologists received a “promising lead” about artifacts reemerging from the ice at Breheimen National Park, Secrets of the Ice said in an Aug. 26 Facebook post. The tip came from an observant park ranger who noticed some old-looking sticks.
Intrigued, two archaeologists set out to survey the area around the ice patch.
Sure enough, they found a 1,500-year-old wooden item, identified as a “scaring stick,” the group said in an Aug. 27 post. Photos show the black whip-like artifact.
“Scaring sticks are a tell-tale sign that reindeer hunting took place there in the Iron Age,” Lars Holger Pilø, the project’s co-director, told McClatchy News.
Scaring sticks were used by ancient hunters to trap reindeer, according to a news release from Secrets of the Ice. “Reindeer are very sensitive animals and tend to shy away from human-like silhouettes or moving objects.”
Knowing reindeer avoided such “potentially dangerous” shapes, ancient hunters would put lines of sticks with movable objects in the snow, the release said. The sticks would scare reindeer, directing them toward archers lying in wait.
The 1,500-year-old scaring stick was “made from the stem of a young birch tree,” archaeologists said in the Facebook post. “The upper part of the tree is bundled up and attached to the top.”
When archaeologists found the stick, it was “flattened against the rock” because of “the pressure from overlying snow and ice,” the group said.
Nearby, archaeologists found “several additional” artifacts that confirmed the presence of ancient reindeer hunters.
“This is the fifth site that we are targeting this year,” Pilø said. “All of these sites are Iron Age reindeer hunting sites.”
The rate of “melting this year is normal so far,” he said, but “the weather has been more challenging than normal with snow, rain and strong winds.”
“Next, our team will be targeting other ice patches in the same area that show potential for discoveries but lack prior information,” the group said in a Facebook post.
Breheimen National Park is in southern Norway and roughly 160 miles northwest from Oslo.
This story was originally published August 28, 2024 at 12:13 PM with the headline "Melting ice and observant park ranger lead to 1,500-year-old hunting tool in Norway."
