Finding ancient well-preserved clothing is rare, making this particular 1,700-year-old tunic especially remarkable. It stands as Norway’s oldest piece of clothing and, despite being buried beneath snow for centuries, it remains in excellent condition.
The Iron Age tunic from Lendbreen is the oldest preserved garment in Norway. “It’s very seldom that we discover well-preserved clothing from prehistoric times,” explains Marianne Vedeler, a professor at the Museum of Cultural History at the University of Oslo. “Only a handful of such clothing has been found in Europe.”
The tunic was uncovered during fieldwork at the Lendbreen Glacier, where archaeologists stumbled upon it. As climate change melts glaciers like Lendbreen at unprecedented rates, hundreds of artifacts emerge from the ice each summer, offering clues about the lives of communities that depended on glaciers and their interconnected relationship with the environment.
The tunic was revealed when the sun exposed the upper edges of the Lendbreen Glacier at the Lomseggen mountain in Breheimen National Park, Norway.
Not far from the tunic, scientists also found a woven mitten. “We speculated whether the tunic and the mitten were connected in some way, but radiocarbon dating of the mitten showed it was about 1,100 years old, from the Viking Age.”
More than 70 textile pieces have also been discovered at the ice sites in Oppland. These appear to be cut-off pieces of fabric, or simply rags, suggesting they were at the end of their life as clothing and were being repurposed for various purposes,” the research team noted.
Archaeologists and conservators are now working to learn more about the clothing’s mysterious past. Who wore the tunic? Why was it left in the glacier? How was it made? What raw materials were used, and how time-consuming was the process?
The Lomseggen mountain, home to the Lendbreen glacier, now separates the modern villages of Lom and Skjak. Archaeologists have determined that this was once a passage used during the Iron Age as a transport route for people traveling between valleys such as Bøverdal and Ottadalen.
Why the tunic was left behind remains a mystery. Perhaps it was left where people had camped to hunt reindeer. Maybe the hunting party was caught in a storm and perished. It’s impossible to determine, but in the realm of archaeology, textiles are notoriously difficult to preserve over time.
The original Lendbreen tunic, estimated to have been made between 230 and 390 A.D., gives archaeologists and historians a glimpse into what life might have been like 1,700 years ago. Woven from sheep’s wool, it is a basic cut and was often repaired with patches on the back, indicating its extensive use over the centuries.
It is also relatively short, with historians concluding it was meant for a slender man or boy. Overall, specialists assert that the yarns and patterns in the tunic were typical of Iron Age practices and did not require expert knowledge to produce.
However, it is evident that making the tunic was a time-consuming task. “In prehistoric times, the time spent on fiber preparation, spinning, and weaving must have varied greatly depending on the differences in raw materials and the tools used, as well as the knowledge and skills of the people producing the textiles,” the study stated. “It must still have been a very time-consuming task to produce a textile. This applies to everyday fabrics as well as the most valuable ones.”
Reconstructing the Lendbreen tunic has been a labor-intensive process. It took 760 hours for artisans to reproduce the tunic from scratch using traditional techniques. They used wool from local breeds of sheep in western Norway that could handle the climate and conditions.