While melting glaciers are bad in almost all respects, it does tend to reveal artifacts of the past. This can come through geology, microorganisms, or, as is very much the case in Norway, human artifacts.
Julian Post Melbye is a glacier archaeologist, finding artifacts of Norway’s ecological past in the melting ice. Winter isn’t bringing enough snow to replenish many of the melting glaciers in the Scandinavian country, so Melbye’s job has become a race against time.
Melbye finds a scaring stick in the video, a comparatively common find in the ice of Norway. Scaring sticks are almost always long and narrow and feature some sort of moveable object at the top. When found intact, they often include a string and a wooden flag.
While specific information on how scaring sticks were used to hunt reindeer in Norway is all but non-existent, texts from Greenland show just how they might have been used. As reindeer would typically stay away from human-like or moving objects, the scaring sticks would be used to control the reindeer, forcing them into good hunting locations.
It’s not exactly clear as to why so many of these sticks were left behind by hunters, but it’s possible surprise weather hindered their ability to retrieve the devices. In some cases, hundreds of them have been discovered in single locations or on single ice patches.