Archaeologist Ásta Hermannsdóttir, head of the Archeology Department of the Skagfirðinga Museum of Architecture reported wooden boat number 222040 on June 12, 2024. The boat was decorated by a university student during the University of Washington’s Aquatic and Fishery Sciences Open House in 2022. It was deployed at the North Pole by the Le Commandant Charcot passenger cruise on August 31, 2023.
Ásta Hermannsdóttir wrote: I found the boat on a beautiful June morning when we were coming to work on an archaeological site by the coast on the farm Hafnir in Iceland. I walked down to the sea, since it was unusually calm and beautiful, when I noticed the boat and saw at once that it must be something special since it had a number and of course the website written on it.
Our Hafnarbúðir research site was a seasonal fishing site, probably from the time of the settlement of Iceland and into the 19th century, and we are excavating seasonal booths and a boat house, along with other structures. The site is eroding into the sea and therefore it‘s a race against time to excavate the site and save the information the earth is keeping before it is too late. The pebble beach where the boat landed is just beside the excavation site and we were all very excited when we found out that the boat was a part of a research project. Finding the boat therefore linked two research projects that are very different, but still both focusing on the sea and climate change.
At the Skagfirðinga Museum of Architecture we have a research grant from Iceland and also a RAPID grant from the National Science Foundation through a team of American archaeologists at UMASS Boston who will be joining us in early July, 2024.
Boat Number | 222040 |
Date Found | June 12, 2024 |
Place Found | Sandvík, Hafnir, Skaga, Iceland 66.089180, -20.375863 |
Found By | Ásta Hermannsdóttir |
Date Deployed | August 31, 2023 |
Who Deployed | Le Commandant Charcot |
Deployment Location | North Pole |
Track Taken | North Atlantic Subpolar Gyre through Fram Strait |
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