A 1,500-year-old Iron Age arrow was found in the Jotunheimen Mountains in southern Norway. Secrets of the Ice, a team of glacial archeologists, discovered the arrow in 2019 when an ice sheet had a major melt, but didn’t announce it until April 28, 2022. The arrowhead, sinew, shaft and fletching all remained intact with finds of steering feathers, which are very rare as the feathers will usually decay over time.
The arrow was still stuck in the ice when archeologists arrived at the site. They used lukewarm to carefully melt it out.
This arrow will be a prime target for our on-going arrow research program. Finds of steering feathers are very rare. pic.twitter.com/glUjZXospC
— Secrets Of The Ice (@brearkeologi) April 28, 2022
“The shaft type is known from Danish weapon sacrifices found in bogs, and the arrowhead is also a well-known type from graves in southern Norway,” Lars Pilø, an archaeologist at the Department of Cultural Heritage, Innlandet County Council, Norway, co-director of the Glacier Archaeology Program, told Live Science. It probably dates between A.D. 300 and 600 when hunters would have used arrows like this one to shoot reindeer in the mountains, he added.
Eight arrows were recovered from the site and were remarkably well-preserved compared to other sites. “This may be caused by the ice being ‘calmer’ here, meaning that there has been less ice dynamics on the site such as densification and deformation,” Secrets of the Ice said on their Twitter page. One arrow was estimated to be 4,000 years old from the Stone Age.
The arrow is roughly 4000 years old. It turned out to be one of an additional six arrows recovered during the 2019 fieldwork, and the earliest arrow from the site so far. But the best was still to come… pic.twitter.com/AVhriVAlUz
— Secrets Of The Ice (@brearkeologi) April 27, 2022
An antler arrowhead was also found during the survey. It is similar in shape to iron arrowheads from A.D. 300, but it may predate that time.
We also found an arrow with an antler arrowhead during our 2019 fieldwork. The arrowhead is quite similar in shape to iron arrowheads from AD 300 onwards. Perhaps the arrow dates to the centuries preceding this date. pic.twitter.com/1zzTACUQ3F
— Secrets Of The Ice (@brearkeologi) April 30, 2022
The glacial archeologists visited the site in 2013 and 2019, noting that the ice patch had retreated 100 meters (328 feet) in the front during these six years. So far, the team has only been able to survey a small part of this newly exposed foreland. They plan to return to the site with a proper large-scale systematic survey.
