Norway's melting ice reveals artifacts hidden for centuries

DW (English)

As glaciers melt in Norway, archeologists are seizing the chance to find ancient artifacts, many of them perfectly preserved by the ice.

Transcript

00:00Norway's glaciers are melting away, and exposing long buried treasures.

00:06It's a race against time.

00:09Julian Post Melbjø is spending an increasing amount of time on these chilly slopes.

00:15Today he's reached an ascent of 2,000 meters.

00:17A few days ago he received a message.

00:20A tourist sent us some photos and GPS markers over archaeological finds he had seen while

00:27hiking in the area.

00:29So we're going to go check them out.

00:31Melbjø is an archaeologist at the University of Oslo, a glacier archaeologist to be exact.

00:38Glaciers are where he does his field research.

00:40For thousands of years our ancestors have been crossing them to hunt, conduct trade,

00:45or search for places to settle.

00:48An animated rendering shows how researchers reconstruct their findings.

00:56The ice along Lennbregen Glacier's edge is melting, like it does at the end of every

01:00summer.

01:01But now winter doesn't create enough snow to replenish it.

01:06Right now it's disappearing even though it's been here for the last 6-7,000 years for people

01:11to experience.

01:14And that's something that's hard to put into words how it makes the loss of a landscape.

01:22The melting ice is exposing the distant past, and archaeologists are excited.

01:28It takes Melbjø four hours to reach the site.

01:33He finds a plain wooden stick.

01:36He's been combing this area for artifacts for around 15 years, so he knows this is not

01:40a random discovery.

01:42A trade route from inland Norway to the west coast once ran through here.

01:46This is part of a scaring stick, the bottom half.

01:49And this is part of a mobile hunting fence for reindeer.

01:54And it would have been used in the late migration period, so sometime around 400 or 500 AD.

02:03So it's about 1,600 years old, this stick.

02:06A few meters further on, Melbjø finds the rest of the stick.

02:11Then it's time to head back down to the valley.

02:17There in Lom municipality, Melbjø and his colleagues put their discoveries on display.

02:25The local mountain museum has a section called Secrets of the Ice, featuring weapons, shoes,

02:32gloves and prehistoric skis.

02:35He points out his favorite.

02:37We have arrows used for hunting from the Stone Age to the medieval period.

02:42Up in the corner here, this is a small arrow.

02:47It's actually a toy.

02:49So this is, somebody's brought kids along while hunting, and the kids needed something

02:55to do while they were waiting for the reindeer to show up.

02:59The glacier's ice preserved everything.

03:02But now archaeologists are facing a major challenge.

03:06When the ice melts, we are moving back in time.

03:09We're finding more and more Bronze Age objects.

03:11We're finding more and more Stone Age objects.

03:14We're finding more and more better preserved objects.

03:17The ice is melting all across Norway's highlands.

03:21Melbjø takes us to another site in the Jotunheimen mountain range.

03:27And in the terrain in front of me, that is from the small river we have in front of us

03:32and all the way up until the ice, has melted back several hundred meters since we started

03:38work on this site.

03:47To give people an idea of what's at stake with the ice loss, the center has created

03:52an artificial ice tunnel for visitors and schoolchildren.

03:56The glacier archaeologist supports the project.

04:02We offer tourists a two and a half hour tour on which we try to give them a well-founded

04:07idea of the glacial landscape, about its particular biological features as well as the archaeology.

04:14We know that if the Earth's climate warms by two degrees Celsius, all of this will be

04:18gone by the end of this century.

04:23Before the glaciers vanish completely, Julian Post Melbjø and the other archaeologists

04:28will continue to work tirelessly in collecting whatever treasures the ice has preserved for

04:32thousands of years.

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