Huge 1,500-Year-Old Arrowhead Released From Melting Glacier
Huge 1,500-Year-Old Arrowhead Released From Melting Glacier
A Viking shot that has been hidden in a glacier for 1,500 years, has revealed climate change.
Along with the arrow shaft and one of the feathers of glaciers located in southern Norway, was an ancient arrowhead dating back to Germanic Iron Age was discovered in southern Norway.
The iron arrowhead weighs only a little over one ounce and is 7 inches long and melted at the ice at one mile.
The archeologists involved found that the climatic change had taken place in the Jotunheimen glacier, which is raising the temperature and sand melting the ice – allowing the artifacts to be set free from their icy cage.
The Glacier Archeology Programme’s anthropologist, ShoshiParks, wrote: “These are the three most impressive National Parks in central Norway, but Jotunheimen is arguably the most amazing, with 250 [ one-mile ] peaks over 1,900 meters hight, including those two tallest in Northern Europe — Galdhøpiggen and Glittertind, according to GlacierHub.org.
‘Among the stone titans are alpine lakes and shimmering turquoise glaciers, chequering an ancient landscape of unspeakable beauty.’
Many of the glaciers in Norway have experienced dramatic melting over the past few years as a result of warmer temperatures that expert say are caused by climate change.
Although this means archaeologists can uncover relics of the past, it is also threatening to destroy them if they are not discovered in time.
Lars Pilø, who is also part of the Glacier Archaeology Program told CNN: ‘At our sites we experience a rapid melting … and bits and pieces of human history melt out in reverse time order.’
The team has been excavating Jotunheimen for quite some time and last year they found an ancient snowshoe for horses, which they estimates dates back to the Viking Age or the Medieval Period.
And because it was frozen in time ‘the preservation is just mindblowing,’ reads a Twitter post announcing the find in 2019.
The Glacier Archaeology Program, which is located in Norway, has uncovered more than 2,000 artifacts from the area’s glaciers with the oldest being around 6,000 years old, which dates back to the Stone Age.
The relics include man-made items like hunting tools, textiles, leather and clothing, as well as zoological materials like antlers, bones, and dung.