HARDANGER, NORWAY—Life in Norway reports that hiker Ernst Hagen discovered an iron arrowhead measuring about five inches long on a mountain some 4,600 feet above sea level in western Norway. Archaeologist Tore Slinning of Hordaland County Council thinks the weapon, once attached to a wooden arrow, was lost in the snow during a reindeer hunt about 1,000 years ago, during the end of the Viking age or the early medieval period. “We don’t know when the long arrow would have decomposed,” Slinning said. “The arrow may have rotted away a long time ago if it was in soil. If it had been encased in snow and ice, it may have decomposed much more recently when the snow had melted.” Villagers living near the area where the arrowhead was found are known to have extracted iron ore from the land, he added, although such finds are not common in the region because they are easily crushed by moving glaciers. The arrowhead will be conserved at the University Museum in Bergen. For more on artifacts that have recently emergred from the ice of Norway's mountain ranges, go to "Melting Season."
