Bronze Age axe found off Norwegian coast – The History Blog

A marine archaeologist has discovered a Bronze Age axe head in the sea off Arendal, southeastern Norway. The shape identifies it as a Middle Bronze Age piece, dating to approximately 1100 B.C. It is the first prehistoric metal artifact ever discovered in Norwegian waters.

Norwegian Maritime Museum archaeologist Jørgen Johannessen found the axe during a routine survey of underwater cultural heritage. At a depth of 40 feet on the edge of a reef, he encountered a pile of flint ballast, commonly used between the 16th and the mid-19th century to stabilize ships before being thrown overboard when the neared the shore. Then he spied the bronze axe inside the pile, and realized it most definitely did not date to 16th-19th century.

He recovered the object and experts examined it. It is a hollow socketed axe, also known as a celt. It was the dominant axe blade of the Nordic Bronze Age (1800-500 B.C.). It would originally have been mounted to an angled wooden shaft, with the angled end of the wood inserted into the open end of the axe head. This was an effective and parsimonious design that allowed the greatest function with the least amount of expensive and hard-to-obtain metal. It is 4.5 inches long, 1.85 inches wide at the widest point (the curved cutting of the blade), and weighs 11.5 ounces.

The site suggests that the ax has arrived there with a vessel. The question is when, and in what context. We have two hypotheses about how the hollow ax might have ended up there: the shipwreck hypothesis and the ballast hypothesis.

The shipwreck hypothesis is that the ax is the remains of a shipwreck over 3,000 years ago. It could come from a boat crossing from southern Scandinavia, or a local boat that sailed along the coast. If this hypothesis is correct, this is the first known shipwreck site from the Bronze Age in Norway.

The ballast hypothesis assumes that the ax was part of the ballast on a ship in the sailing age. The ax was then shoveled out together with the flint on the way to the port in Arendal, where a new load was to be picked up. In that case, the ax ended up on the seabed a few hundred years ago, either directly from an area in southern Scandinavia where flint is common along the coasts, or via ballast depots in other ports. In that case, the ax will be a loose find with no other context than the ballast flint it was found with.

Norwegian Maritime Museum archaeologists are returning to the find site this week to explore it further. They hope to find evidence of either of the two hypotheses, especially the Bronze Age shipwreck hypothesis which would be an unprecedented find.