norway arrowheads

From ScienceNordic: One late August day in 2011 Tord Bretten and his sister Line B. Aukrust came home from an extraordinarily successful hunting trip in Dovrefjell, a mountainous area in central Norway. In addition to a reindeer buck, they had three arrows and two bows that had melted out of a glacier.

One of the arrows turned out to be from another reindeer hunt, but the hunt had taken place 5,400 years ago. This is the oldest archaeological find from mountain snowfields in Scandinavia.

To think about people with the heart and soul of the hunter like you and me bowhunting deer 5,000 years ago very much like we do today is mind-blowing!

This gives me an idea for an incredible TV episode. Go to Norway and hunt a reindeer in the mountains near where those artifacts were found, and visit the museum where the old bow, arrows and heads are now displayed. Go back 5,000 years in deer hunting time…what would you think about that?

I am going to try to do it.

Photo: Åge Hojem and Martin Callahan/NTNU University Museum