Glacial archaeologists have recently discovered the second prehistoric ski of a pair of skis at Digervarden, a mountain in central Norway. Found just five meters from where the first one was uncovered seven years earlier, the ski was radiocarbon-dated to 1,300 years ago. As global warming leads to more glacial retreat, many artifacts have surfaced and sparked the need for further archaeological research in the area.

The Secrets of the Ice initiative was started by the Innlandet County Council and the Museum of Cultural History in Oslo through their Glacial Archaeology Program. Lars Holger Pilø, archaeologist and co-director of the initiative, said the prehistoric skis are the best preserved pair in the world known to date.

“This discovery is groundbreaking for two reasons. First, it demonstrates that humans used the high mountains for hunting and transport during winter, despite the considerable risks involved. Second, the skis’ remarkable preservation, including their bindings, allows us to create precise replicas and experiment with how Iron Age humans might have skied,” he said. Thanks to their intact condition, they also offer “entirely new insights into skiing techniques and how they may have been used,” added Pilø.

Each ski is made of a different wood, with one from birch and the other from pine. However, their proximity and radiocarbon dates suggest they were being used as a pair at the time, even if this was not the original intention. This finding suggests the value that people in this harsh landscape, well above the treeline, placed on wooden objects.

To make such discoveries, scientists must first identify locations with the most potential for archaeological finds. Glaciers flow down mountains and can destroy fragile artifacts, so non-moving ice patches are a safer bet for finding well-preserved pieces. Using both aerial photography and satellite imagery, as well as local information from hikers and reindeer herders, archaeologists map out ice patches to search for promising sites. Pilø shared that a breakthrough came in 2006 when a major ice melt revealed hundreds of artifacts and inspired the creation of the Secrets of the Ice program.

“The rapid melting of glacial ice due to anthropogenic climate change is revealing archaeological objects that have been frozen for centuries or even millennia. These finds offer insights into past human activity, technology and adaptation to challenging environments,” Pilø explained to GlacierHub. Typically, the melting ice does the excavation work for the scientists, but in the case of the prehistoric ski, an ice pick was necessary to assist in the removal of the artifact.

By melting the ice to reveal these important artifacts, in a way, climate change has aided in the advancement of archaeological discovery that could help us better understand the ways humanity dealt with climate changes of the past. This historic ability to adapt to climate change has been “one of the most striking insights” of the initiative, Pilø said.

“For example, during the Late Antique Little Ice Age (535–660 CE)—a period of significant climatic cooling—local agriculture in the mountains faced severe challenges as it was already at the edge of viability,” explained Pilø. “In response, people intensified their reindeer hunting on the ice, a clear example of climate adaptation and resource management under pressure. We can see evidence of increased hunting activity through the number of arrows lost on the ice,” he said.

These arrows demonstrate a change in human activity congruent to a shift in the climate. The recent skis found in the high mountains also show that humans used the area in winter. Pilø explained that since previous ski finds had come mostly from lower areas where they likely served for cross-country ski traverses, these high-mountain skis prove that humans traveled at higher elevations in the winter than scientists had once thought. 

These arrows and skis help build the human story archaeologists are trying to decipher. They may also go hand-in-hand with the environmental story of Earth’s natural history. The Late Antique Little Ice Age that Pilø described is reflected in tree ring records across Europe. Nicole Davi, a paleoclimatologist at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory’s Tree-Ring Laboratory, told GlacierHub: “Tree-ring records add hundreds to thousands of years of context to the current warming that we are seeing. Most meteorological records are less than 100 years old so we can use paleo information to fully understand the range of possibilities in the climate cycle.”

Through tree rings, we can build a record of Earth’s climate history that provides better context to climate change today and could help us better understand archaeological finds. “The paleoclimate history can add context to things like human migration or societal collapse,” she continued.

Drawing both on tree-ring records and on discoveries, such as the artifacts found in Norway, scientists are able to discern not only what the planet may have looked like thousands of years ago, but also how human societies were able to adapt to those conditions. Still, it can be difficult to bridge the gap between the artifacts and the tree rings, Pilø noted.

“The relationship between these archaeological finds and paleoclimate is a more complex and less well understood aspect of glacial archaeology. While these discoveries may offer clues about past climate conditions, interpreting this relationship is challenging,” he said. “Glacial archaeology is still a young and evolving field, and we are only beginning to uncover how these artifacts can deepen our understanding of past climates and human resilience in changing environments,” Pilø told GlacierHub.

There are still many secrets left for the ice to reveal. As glaciers continue to melt and more artifacts are exposed, the puzzling picture of humanity’s and Earth’s history may slowly come into focus and perhaps provide insights into how to tackle the challenges of our changing climate.