Juvfonne Tunnel Traverses 7,600 Years of Norwegian Ice, Forcing Archaeologists to Speed Up

In the Norwegian massif of Jotunheimen, the Juvfonne ice sheet houses a tunnel opened to the public since 2010. Its walls preserve the oldest ice dated on the continental mainland of Norway. Around it, the melting of the glaciers exposes hunting remnants that glacial archaeology is trying to rescue before they vanish.

Klimapark 2469 borrows its name from Galdhøpiggen and leads visitors to a plaque perched at 1,850 meters

The park takes its name from the altitude of Galdhøpiggen, the country’s highest point at 2,469 meters. Thus, the number immediately signals that everything here unfolds at high altitude. The site itself lies lower, on the Juvass plateau, where the Juvfonne plaque extends up to about 1,850 meters above sea level.

The tunnel’s construction began in May 2010. According to Innlandet County’s glacial archaeology program, French mountaineering guides first carved the gallery with specialized ice axes. Then, in June, Norwegian artist Peder Istad sculpted the interior and installed LED lighting, before the tunnel opened to the public on June 22.

A study published in The Cryosphere in January 2017 dates the base of the plaque to about 7,600 years before present

Between 2009 and 2015, a team led by Rune Strand Ødegård tracked the plaque for six years. The organic layers and carbon aerosols trapped in the clear ice were dated by radiocarbon, notably at the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland. The result: ages ranging from the current surface to roughly 7,600 years at the bottom.

This value, expressed in calibrated years before present, corresponds to the middle of the 6th millennium BCE. Consequently, Juvfonne has existed without interruption since the end of the Mesolithic. Moreover, moss mats that appeared in 2014 along its edges had been buried by ice about 2,000 years ago, a sign of an unprecedented retreat since that time.

Discovered in 2007 by a reindeer herder, alarm stakes and stone hides recount an organized hunt

In August 2007, reindeer herder Jan Stokstad reported numerous stakes planted and stone shelters cleared by the melting. These alarm stakes, arranged in a barrier, prevented the animals from reaching the ice where they sought the coolness. From then on, hunters ambushed behind the masoned blinds and fired with bows at just a few meters away.

Twelve samples dated during the winter of 2007–2008 place these hunts in the Ve and VI centuries, then the Viking era. In 2010, the team recovered 58 additional stakes from the recently revealed margins. Thus, Juvfonne became a testing ground to estimate the volume of remains at risk.

The 48 arrows unearthed in 2026 at Kvitingskjølen highlight the urgency of collecting before the ice vanishes

During the 2026 field campaign, the Secrets of the Ice program recovered 48 arrows across three neighboring plaques, Langfonne, Storfonne and Hanklefonne. These sites lie in Jotunheimen but are distinct from Juvfonne. A slate arrowhead still affixed to its wooden shaft would be between 5,000 and 6,000 years old, estimated by typological comparison.

Additionally, since 2006, the program has documented 73 sites and more than 5,000 objects. However, once liberated, wood, leather, and feathers degrade within a few seasons. The Juvfonne tunnel thus serves a dual role: an educational showcase and a tangible reminder of a glacial memory that is fading away faster than teams can collect it.