1600 CE, based on the craftsmanship and the shape of the carved ski tip. The skis are made of pine, and even with a potential old wood problem, it appears unlikely that the wood is 400 years older than the ski. Traditionally, skis are not made from large, old pines (Thomas Aslaksby, pers. comm.). Theoretically, they could be made from bog wood or reused wood, but this appears unlikely. Steinar Sørensen (1995b, 63) did claim that the ski could only have been preserved by expanding ice if it had been lost during the Little Ice Age since it otherwise would have deteriorated. In view of more recent glacial archaeological observations this claim is too simplistic. We now know that the context around ice patches is much more dynamic when it comes to snow melting cycles. The numerous other finds from the same time recovered in Oppland attest to this (Pilø et al. 2018) Wooden objects can preserve for some time outside the ice at high altitude. The variation in ice patch sizes also depends on factors other than temperature (Ødegård et al. 2017).
The binding area of the ski differs from the prehistoric skis, but fits well into what is known from Nordic skis from the Medieval and Post-Medieval Period (Sørensen 1996). The same goes for the narrow width—10 cm at the binding.
Other ski finds
A ski tip was recovered from the Langfonne ice patch in 2014. It is a flat piece of pine with profiled sides. The ski tip has been twisted 90 degrees to the plane of the ski. The profiled edges are reminiscent of an acanthus-ornamentation, which was popular from the Medieval Period and onwards. It is radiocarbon-dated to cal 1680–1939. There is a more than 80% probability that the ski tip is from the late seventeenth, eighteenth or nineteenth century.
A 1953 correspondence between Sigurd Grieg, director of the Maihaugen museum in Lillehammer, and Professor Bjørn Hougen, Universitetets Oldsaksamling in Oslo, reveals the find of a ski from glacial ice from Mount Storhø in Lesja, Oppland County. It was reportedly found in the snow in a place where there used to be a glacier. The letter from Grieg states that the ski was bent the wrong way (similar to the Digervarden ski) and that it had a groove on the underside. The Maihaugen museum was allowed to keep the ski, but it has unfortunately not been possible to locate it in the museum storage.
Recently, the front part of a wooden ski was reported from the Hardangerjøkulen Glacier (Pilø 2017). The find was made in 1987, but only reported in 2016. The ski is not radiocarbon-dated yet, but is believed to be no more than two or three centuries old at the most, based on the narrow width of the ski and the active glacier context.
Discussion
The context of the skis from the glacial ice is very different than other old skis preserved in bogs in the Nordic countries and North-West Russia. It appears, however, that the glacial skis are essentially not typologically different from the bog skis, even though the high-alpine landscape and snow conditions where they were used would have been very different from the lowlands. The exception is the Lendbreen ski or snowshoe, which has no parallels among the lowland finds.
© Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2018
