INNLANDET, NORWAY—More than 40 hunting blinds were discovered on the remote inland mountain of Sandgrovskaret by glacial archaeologists, according to a Science Norway report. Hunters would have hidden behind the semicircular stone structures in order to get close enough to shoot at reindeer with bows and arrows, according to archaeologist Espen Finstad of the Secrets of the Ice project. He explained that the reindeer would have traveled into the snow and ice of the mountains to escape biting flies. The hunters, he added, likely lived in the valleys. “In the Stone Age, they would have lived in simple settlements, and during the Iron Age they would have had grand long houses down in the valley,” he explained. The researchers also recovered 32 scaring sticks, which are about a yard long and thought to have been set in the soil with a flag on one end. The reindeer would have traveled away from the flapping flag toward the hunting blind, Finstad said. Five arrows, three with iron arrowheads, were also found. One of the arrowheads is in a style only found in one grave in Norway dated to between A.D. 550 and 600. The other two arrows are thought to date to 800 B.C., based upon their shape. To read about artifacts that emerged from melting ice in Norway's Jotunheimen Mountains, go to "Melting Season."
