A Hiker Discovered a Trove of Artifacts in Norway’s Melting Ice. The Site Turned Out to Be a 1,500-Year-Old Reindeer Trap

Located in the mountains of western Norway, the facility was likely used by Iron Age hunters to trap and kill wild reindeer. Experts say it’s the only site of its kind ever found in the country

Sonja Anderson | Daily Correspondent

November 20, 2025

Melting ice in Norway’s mountains has revealed a trove of cut logs, reindeer antlers, iron spearheads and other hunting tools. Experts say the site is a 1,500-year-old reindeer trap. It features two fences made out of large logs, which Iron Age hunters used to trap and kill wild reindeer.

Positioned about 4,600 feet above sea level, the site is located on the mountain plateau of Aurlandsfjellet in western Norway’s Vestland County. Last year, a hiker named Helge Titland discovered several cut logs in the area, according to a statement from the Vestland County Municipality. In recent months, researchers from the municipality and the University Museum of Bergen conducted an investigation of the area.

Fun fact: Who is the hiker who discovered the artifacts?

Helge Titland is a local resident and cultural heritage enthusiast who had previously reported other hunting artifacts on the mountain, parts of which are protected by Norway’s Cultural Heritage Act.

The ruined structures they discovered are the only wooden mass-capture facility ever found in the ice in Norway—and potentially all of Europe, says Øystein Skår, an archaeologist with Vestland County, in the statement.

The researchers think a cool period in the mid-sixth century might have brought more snowfall to the area, driving away the hunters. Because the logs and deer antlers are well preserved, the trapping facility was probably buried under snow and ice soon after it was abandoned.

Leif Inge Åstveit, an archaeologist at the University Museum of Bergen, tells the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK) that the trap was built at the end of the early Iron Age, which lasted from roughly 500 B.C.E. to 550 C.E. At the time, societies in Norway were growing and becoming increasingly organized, with wealthier individuals settling in the fjord villages in western Norway.

The newly discovered trap “gives insight into the importance reindeer hunting may have had in a broader societal context during the early Iron Age,” Åstveit tells NRK, per a translation by Science Norway’s Alette Bjordal Gjellesvik.

As for the wealth of the fjord communities, “we now suspect that wild reindeer hunting played an even greater role than earlier believed,” Åstveit adds.

Norway has a large population of wild reindeer, and hunters have been devising methods of killing the animals for many centuries. In 2022, researchers in Norway discovered 1,700-year-old arrows near 40 stone-built hunting blinds, where hunters once hid from passing deer. In 2023, experts unearthed a collection of 1,500-year-old “scaring sticks”—wooden poles topped with small flags—which hunters once stuck in the snow in lines, reported McClatchy’s Aspen Pflughoeft. Reindeer were frightened of the flags, so they ran away from the line and toward waiting archers.

At the recently discovered trapping facility, researchers found a cache of hunting supplies, such as iron spearheads, wooden arrows and parts of bows. They also discovered a brooch carved from an antler and many small, finely crafted wooden objects.

The archaeologists were mystified by the presence of oars so high up in the mountains. Thomas Bruen Olsen / University Museum of Bergen

“The most unexpected discovery is one or more oars decorated with detailed ornamentation,” Skår says in the statement, per Science Norway. “What these were used for, and why they were brought into the mountains 1,500 years ago, is still a mystery.”

All of the discoveries are now being kept in a freezer in the University Museum of Bergen’s conservation department, where they will slowly dry off, per the statement. Skår hopes the preserved artifacts will be exhibited at the museum in the future. He says that melting ice puts other artifacts at risk.

“One challenge now is that objects risk disappearing as people collect them,” Skår says in the statement, per Science Norway. “And once the ice melts further, any wooden material will decay quickly.”

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