The discovery of a wooden arrow with feather fletching and a quartzite tip in the Jotunheimen mountains of eastern Norway has caught the attention of glacial archaeologist Espen Finstad. According to the New York Times, Finstad suspects that the arrow is around 3,000 years old. This rare find adds to the numerous artifacts that have emerged from melting ice in Norway, with approximately 250 artifacts discovered this year alone. Finstad describes it as one of his top 10 favorite discoveries due to its exceptional preservation.
Although the arrow is broken into three pieces, the arrowhead and fletching are still intact, as reported by the New York Times. Typically, archaeologists have to piece together the history from what remains, but this arrow leaves nothing to the imagination, according to William Taylor, an archaeologist at the University of Colorado, Boulder. In Mongolia, Taylor searches for similar discoveries amid melting ice. Finstad and his colleagues at Secrets of the Ice, a cooperative project between the Innlandet County Municipality and University of Oslo’s Museum of Cultural History, have uncovered over 3,700 artifacts across 65 sites, as per Discover Magazine. Some of their findings include hunting tools, a 1,000-year-old pine whisk, an iron knife, and ancient clothing.
Earlier this month, archaeologists discovered an intact wooden arrow with a freshwater pearl mussel serving as an arrowhead, as reported by Discover. The Secrets of the Ice team shared a photo of the arrow on Sept. 13, stating that although it looks like it was lost last year, it is actually around 3,300 years old. Lars Holger Pilo, another archaeologist from Secrets of the Ice, confirms that shell arrowheads similar to this are only found in Norway and northwest America. The race is on for archaeologists around the world to uncover artifacts revealed by melting ice before they are destroyed by the changing climate. According to Taylor, it is the urgency of catastrophic global climate change that has given rise to the discipline of glacial archaeology. (Read more discoveries stories.)
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