LENDBREEN, NORWAY—Gizmodo reports that archaeologists investigating a mountain pass in central Norway’s Lomseggen Ridge, at an altitude of 6,300 feet, have recovered artifacts dating from the Iron Age through the medieval period, including mittens, shoes, pieces of sleds, a walking stick bearing a runic inscription, a knife with a wooden handle, a wood distaff for holding wool, and the skeletal remains of a dog with a collar and leash. The researchers have also found cairns marking the way, and a shelter. “Global warming is leading to the melting of mountain ice worldwide, and the finds melting out of the ice are a result of this,” said Lars Pilø of Norway’s Glacier Archaeology Program. The pass through the mountains is thought to have been traversed by traders and local people traveling to their summer homes. Pilø said horse remains, and horse snowshoes and dung, indicate that horses were used to travel the route, but likely only when its rough ground was covered in snow. The passage fell out of use by A.D. 1500, Pilø added, perhaps because of climate change, economic shifts, or even the onslaught of the Black Death in the fourteenth century. For more, go to "Melting Season."
