Archaeologists in Norway have discovered a 4000 year old arrow trapped in ice.
The discovery was made at the foot of Mount Lauvhøe, located at just over 6,500 meters in Lom Municipality, Norway. The last time archaeologists explored the site in 2017, they found arrows from the Iron and Middle Ages.
According to Lars Holger Pilø of the Norway’s Department of Cultural Heritage, the arrowhead was found after the ice melted in the area in recent years. The discovery predates previous finds by 2000 years, which adds more “time depth” to the site, Pilø said. Researchers can determine the age of the artifact from its shape, but will submit a sample for carbon dating when the excavation season ends.
The find is probably evidence of ancient hunters stalking reindeer, which made their way onto the snow and ice in summer months thousands of years ago to avoid clouds of botflies. (Botflies are a family of flies known as Oestridae. Their larvae are internal parasites of mammals, with some species growing in the mammal’s flesh and others in its intestines. ‘Dermatobia hominis’ is the only botfly species known to routinely parasitize humans.)
“Sometimes, when an arrow missed its target, it burrowed itself deep into the snow and was lost,” Pilø said. “Sad for the hunter but a bull’s eye for archaeology!”
The site where the arrowhead was found is one of 66 ice fields in Norway, where more than 4,000 archaeological finds have been preserved over the years.
It was hard to date because the arrow shaft was fractured at both ends, according to a Secrets of the Ice post on X, the social networking website that replaced Twitter. After removing glacial silt, researchers found that the relic was far older than they had first believed it to be. Archaeologists had initially believed it to be from the Iron Age.
“The arrowhead is likely to have been a pressure flaked stone projectile, meaning that the arrow is probably around 4000 years old.”
Archaeologists describe the preservation power of ice over time: “The ice is a time machine: It brings precious objects from the past to our time in an unaltered state, like sleeping beauties.”