The Thunderstone Mystery: What's a Stone Age Axe Doing in an Iron Age Tomb?

[Liffrea]

"If one finds something once, it's accidental. If it is found twice, it's puzzling. If found thrice, there is a pattern," the archaeologists Olle Hemdorff and Eva Thäte say.

In 2005 the archaeologists investigated a grave at Avaldsnes in Karmøy in southwestern Norway, supposed to be from the late Iron Age, i.e. from 600 to 1000 AD. Avaldsnes is rich in archeological finds. They dot an area that has been a seat of power all the way back to around 300. Archaeologist Olle Hemdorff at the University of Stavanger's Museum of Archaeology was responsible for a series of excavations at Avaldsnes in 1993-94 and 2005-06.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/06/100614101724.htm

[The Ripper]

I don't know if its that much of a mystery. They have been associated with the thunder god. Thor in Scandinavia and Ukko in Finland, where similar finds have been made.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/49/Vasarakirves.jpg

[Lenny]

The researchers say that people back in the Iron Age had a conscious relationship to objects from earlier times that connected them to their past.

"People probably considered old objects as a heritage from their ancestors. Recycling of old burial mounds for new graves is an indication of this relationship. The idea was that the mounds were memories from a distant past, and written sources indicate that recycling of mounds had a double function. Apart from providing a grave for the dead they also legitimized property and rights. People asserted their control over an area by burying their family in a gravesite belonging to their ancestors," Thäte explains.


The archeologists think that people in pre-history were superstitious and that the axe was deposited in the grave as a part of the burial ritual.

"According to folklore a flint axe might protect against lightening and function as a kind of charm," Thäte says.

In Northern Europe, the old idea of the thunder god Thor, who throws his hammer when lightning strikes, is common. It was alive all the way up to the 19th century.
I think that explains the mystery, does it not?

Some Iron-Age Norwegians reburied their dead with ancient relics for religious reasons. These relics were readily available, because the burial-sites were being reused, originally used thousands of years earlier.

[Sisak]

I have a question. Whether archaeologist have ever found iron axes or anything made of iron in Norway?