Melting glaciers in Norway reveal a lost Viking-era mountain pass scattered with perfectly preserved artefacts up to 1,700 years old including knitted mittens, a wooden whisk and a broken walking stick with a runic inscription

Melting glaciers in Norway have revealed ancient artefacts dropped by the side of a road more than 1,000 years ago.

Clothes, tools, equipment and animal bone have been found by a team at a lost mountain pass at Lendbreen in Norway’s mountainous region.

A haul of more than 100 artefacts at the site includes horseshoes, a wooden whisk, a walking stick, a wooden needle, a mitten and a small iron knife. 

The team also found the frozen skull of an unlucky horse used to carry loads that did not make it over the ice. 

The objects that were contained in ice reveal that the pass was used in the Iron Age, from around AD 300 until the 14th century.

Activity on the pass peaked around AD 1000 and declined after the black death in the 1300s, due as well to economic and climate factors.

The researchers say the melting of mountain glaciers due to climate change has revealed the historical objects, with many more to come. 

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Snowshoe for a horse, found during the 2019 fieldwork at Lendbreen, which is yet to be radiocarbon-dated

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Whisk made from pine, found in the pass area at Lendbreen. Radiocarbon-dated to c. AD 1100. Such whisks are still made today, but they are usually not pointed, so this artefact may have been used secondarily for another purpose, perhaps as a tent peg