Margain: Human-Ocean Interactions in the Past, Present and Future

13/08/2026

The last samples are taken and we're finished at Røydehamn after a lovely two weeks on beautiful Bokn. We'll be posting news from our post-excavation work here over the next few months, so hopefully we'll get some exciting results 🤩

11/08/2026

Our first find at Røydehamn - a stone fishing line sinker from what we think was probably a hut for storing equipment, in a wet area alongside a small cliff. These kinds of sinkers have been used for thousands of years, and are typical for fishing stations across the North Atlantic.

09/08/2026

At the end of week one of our excavations, we’ve completed trenches through two of the seasonal fishing structures at Skådahabn. The boggy soil – full of organic material and thick with roots – proved challenging to dig, and the biting midges that appeared as soon as the wind dropped were also a bit of a challenge sometimes! But it was rewarding to dig as both structures contained floor layers, probably representing multiple seasons of use, and plenty of material for dating. The floors of the buildings were built up with a foundation of stones with a downward slope, which would have helped with drainage, and one had a clear bench on the higher side of the building. In the other structure we found a burnt plank, most likely the remains of part of a roof structure. So we can already say something about the living conditions here – damp! – but the samples we’ve taken will tell us more about what it was like to live and work in these structures in the past. This coming week (10th-14th August) we’ll open trenches at Røydehamn on the other side of Bokn, so that we can compare the dates and conditions of the two sites. Visitors are welcome to stop by any time between 09:00 and 16:00, details on how to get there can be found here: https://ut.no/mine-turer/1112245232

05/08/2026

We're underway with our excavations on Bokn! This week and next we'll be excavating seasonal fishing structures at Skådahabn and Røydehamn, hoping to find out both when these were used and what it was like for the people who lived and worked there. So far both our trenches, in two different structures, have both floors and fireplaces. This is great news for us - fireplaces will contain charcoal that we can radiocarbon date, and floors contain all kinds of clues about the local environment and the living conditions inside the house - as well as exciting artefacts, sometimes! You can follow our progress here or come by to visit: we're at Skådahabn until Friday then at Røydehamn all next week. Details of how to find us in the QR codes of the first photo 🤩

20/07/2026

We have now started the excavation project in Hafnir, (NW Iceland), a seasonal fishing station. This is our final year, and we are now reaching the beginning of the 12th century. On the second day, we found a coin from the period when Ólafur kyrri was the king of Norway from 1067-1093. That perhaps indicates a connection between these two countries in regard to the acquisition of marine resources during this time period?

Here is a little news article that was published in the newspaper Morgunblaðið.

https://www.mbl.is/frettir/innlent/2026/07/20/aldagomul_mynt_fannst_i_hofnum/?utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=mbl.is&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwY2xjawTLNd1leHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFzblNmNnBoUndTR2JBdGNac3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHokIs0a5XsVoPJ2NtoRUkiT779m2eKT2WapqXLNZKJ0sw36FnyihbsYlRnWM_aem_Y9Uscj-OKhZAhDtor4IY6w =1784528418

Mynt sem talin er vera frá tíma Ólafs kyrra Noregskonungs (1067–1093) fannst á öðrum degi uppgraftar á verbúðaminjum í Hafnabúðum á Skaga í síðustu viku. Myntin er sú fyrsta sem finnst við uppgröftinn og svo best er vitað sú fyrsta sem finnst í verstöð frá þessum tím...

25/06/2026

What a perfect day for a site visit! ☀️In the foreground of this photo you can see one of the seasonal fishing structures on the island of Bokn, southwest Norway, that we'll be excavating in August. Today I (Dawn) was checking out the access to site and other practicalities, so that we're all set to get digging in a month's time. Watch this space for info on how and when to visit us, as well as hopefully some exciting finds 🤞🤩

18/06/2026

Congratulations to Per Christian Volden Grasmo, who has successfully defended his MA thesis! 🎉🎓🎉

Per Christian wrote about small boathouses and what they can tell us about the social organisation of maritime activities in northern Norway and Iceland. A lot of research on this topic has focused on larger structures, especially related to large ships and military organisation, but Per Christian's perspective gives us new information about how small scale, seasonal and daily activities - like fishing and local transport - were practiced and what kind of boats were used. Rows of small boathouses (or perhaps open boat shelters), like the line of ridges seen behind the excavation area in the second picture here (from Hafnir, NW Iceland), suggest that even where there were several groups fishing or hunting from the same area, they communicated and collaborated, perhaps towards a collective goal. There is a lot of similarity between the north Norwegian and Icelandic material, so this is a great step towards exploring the connections between the two regions that we can see in the archaeological record 👀

Per Christian's thesis will soon be available to access at MARGAIN's NVA page: https://nva.sikt.no/projects/2620554, along with the rest of our project outputs. We wish him a very well-deserved relaxing summer after all his hard work!

15/06/2026

Archaeologists studying animals and plants in the past need to learn about their ecology and behaviour - this is how we understand how and when interactions would have taken place, and what meanings they might have had.

MARGAIN MA graduate Valerio Punzi has just completed a field course in Húsavik, northwest Iceland, studying marine mammals in the wild. The course focused on whale identification and behavioural monitoring, with the aim of assessing patterns in both past and present whale activity in relation to environmental and water conditions, or stress caused by whale-watching activity, especially boat traffic. Valerio spent up to 6 hours per day at sea with a research team, collecting data on whales (mostly humpbacks). The team used field survey techniques and equipment such as drones, theodolites, photo-ID, behavioural observations, body size measurements, parasite and entanglement markers, and biostatistics, as well as learning about the history of human-cetacean interactions in a classroom setting. Valerio is planning a PhD project on relationships between humans and whales in Norway and the North Atlantic, and this course is a fantastic chance to make the connection between museum artefacts of whalebone, and the animals themselves🐋

Here you can see some of Valerio's videos and pictures from Húsavik - check out how close the white-beaked dolphins get to the boat! The course was run by Rannsóknasetur Háskóla Íslands á Húsavík / Húsavík Research Centre in collaboration with Háskólasetur Vestfjarða, North Sailing, and Gentle Giants Whale Watching.

10/06/2026

The plastic trash that we cleaned up from the beach in Hjartøy will soon be on its way to be safely disposed of. But before that, the University of Bergen archaeology field school students got a chance to go through their finds as an archaeologist would. Together we explored questions about the objects' age, origin, and function - the same questions we ask of archaeological artefacts - and thought about what this tells us about life in 20th-21st century Europe. We also asked ourselves what objects we recognise, and whether someone from 100 years ago would recognise the same things. In this way, we examine what it means to do archaeology, how we make our interpretations, and how dependent they are on our own personal experience and knowledge. Our finds from Hjartøy ranged in age from a glass bottle probably produced around 1930-1950, and some snack packaging with a production date in 2025 - representing at least a 75 year period. You can see more about what we found here: https://ryddenorge.no/aksjon/59735 - take a look yourself, and have a think about what you could find out about our society from this assemblage.