Analysing lead bullets from an 18th century Russian Pomor site on Svalbard. Four different calibers of lead bullets plus lots of evidence of shot manufacture - from lead bars to waste to cut sprues.

17th century whaler's shoe found on the surface in northeastern Svalbard.

An untimely artifact of archaeology - an artifact tag from the Institute of Archaeology of the USSR - written in 1994.

Today at Svalbard Museum - figuring out how to conserve a 400 year old piece of boiled whale fat 🐳

Coles Bay, Svalbard - the shipping harbour for the Soviet coal mining operation at Grumant from the 1930s to 1961. At one point, Grumant and Coles Bay had a combined population of 1,100 people making it the largest population centre in Svalbard. It was closed in 1961 due to dwindling coal reserves.

Artifact packaging of cigarette and medicine containers can be seen as artifacts in themselves 😂

Though the item conservation practices leave much to be desired...

Five months into my new position and I'm finally starting the job I got hired to do - working with the archaeological collections. First is the Russian Pomor material of which we have around 20,000 items, mostly excavated by Russian archaeologists in the 70s, 80, and 90s.

Stuck in snow on a glacier. I've driven in white out conditions before (thanks for the experience Canada!) but this was something else. The world was a white sheet of paper and the only thing that existed was the snowmobile in front of me.

Getting back into Bluesky with shots from my new home - Svalbard - an incredible glacial land of ice and snow with even more incredible archaeology.

Off to Nordic TAG (@nordicarchtag.bsky.social) in Turku.

My babushka is a sewing grandmaster.

Keep also in mind that at age 83 her eyesight isn't the best... she sews a lot by the feel of the needle. All of this is made from discarded clothing.

An incredible icescape on the Baltic Sea by Oulu during the five hours of daylight. The temperature was around -21 C with windchill.

Oulu sunset, 14:53, 19 Nov 2023.

A memory of the mushroom season - admiring the sporing body of an inocybe genus fungus growing on an unidentified iron interconnecter left behind by the retreating German troops in northeastern Norway while working alongside the local mushroom society.

I guess I'm officially a doctor now 😃

For those interested about the archaeology of twentieth-century single industrial mining towns in the (sub-)Arctic can find and read my thesis here - munin.uit.no/handle/10037...

If you want to contribute, please send an abstract to me by December 1st. And even if you don't feel like presenting - come to what will surely be a great session!

For my part, I can promise you fungi and charming Norwegian mushroom ladies and Nazi ruins.

Welcome to my fungal musings for a possibly better future.

I bring you this lichen growing on crushed and melted glass from the scorched earth retreat by the German forces from Sør-Varanger, northeastern Norway in October 1944.