Melting Mountain Ice Is Bringing Ancient Secrets to the Surface . . .

Archaeologists Are Racing to Find the Artifacts Before They’re Lost to Time



In Norway’s highest mountains, experts are scouring perilous terrain for pieces of the past, long stored in mint condition in ice patches. As temperatures rise across the world, glacial archaeologists must find the emerging artifacts before they degrade forever



This arrow with a pressure-flaked arrowhead made from gray quartzite dates to the Late Stone Age or Bronze Age and was found on Norway’s ice. The pitch and the animal sinew used to fasten the arrowhead are still preserved, which is exceptionally rare. Espen Finstad, Innlandet County Municipality

Anna Fiorentino | Freelance writer
May 21, 2026 2:52 p.m.

A brown leather loafer came into view on a patch of ice high up in Norway’s Innlandet Mountains. As soon as local hiker and history buff Reidar Marstein spotted it, he knew it was significant. Marstein wrapped the shoe in paper and plastic, carried it down the slope and called a local archaeologist. That perfectly intact item, found on an exceptionally warm September day in 2006, ended up transforming an entire scientific field. It belonged to a Bronze Age Viking 3,400 years ago.

The artifact formed the basis for the largest glacial archaeology program in the world: Norway’s Secrets of the Ice. Marstein and Espen Finstad, whom Marstein had phoned that day, founded this joint research initiative with the Innlandet County Council and Oslo’s Museum of Cultural History after the shoe’s discovery. Ever since, the program’s small team of archaeologists have traversed the Innlandet Mountains when ice melt reaches its peak in August and September, scouring the terrain for more hints about the past.



a partially disintegrated brown shoe tied together

This roughly 3,400-year-old shoe made from rawhide was found at the Langfonne ice patch in 2006 and became the starting gun for Secrets of the Ice. Vegard Vike, Museum of Cultural History


“Everything we’ve found from prehistory had to be carried up by somebody in animal-hide leather shoes. They were quite rugged, because they didn’t have a choice. It was just another day for them,” says Julian Post-Melbye, a glacial archaeologist with the program and the Museum of Cultural History. Now, he adds, it’s humbling “to do fieldwork in lightweight gear and Gore-Tex—everything money can buy to make walking around in the mountains easier.”

Secrets of the Ice’s archaeologists have collected about 4,500 artifacts so far. Among them are the world’s oldest intact pair of wooden skis; a 3,000-year-old Viking arrowhead shot by a reindeer hunter in the Bronze Age; and textiles, traps and tunics lost along ancient trade routes. The program earned two European Heritage Awards last year for excellence in conservation, research, education and citizen engagement around the world.

More:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/melting-mountain-ice-is-bringing-ancient-secrets-to-the-surface-archaeologists-are-racing-to-find-the-artifacts-before-theyre-lost-to-time-180988777/