Emily Chan
When archaeologists with the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research (NIKU) were conducting investigations of the old harbor area in Oslo, they discovered the remains of a rare iron gauntlet from the 14th century. It most likely belonged to a knight.
Around 1050, Oslo was founded as a medieval city and harbor. But after a fire destroyed the city, the Norwegian king Christian IV moved Oslo across the bay in 1624. Between 2019 and 2020, and then from 2022 to 2023, archaeologists have been excavating the site.
According to an NIKU archaeologist named Håvard Hegdal, they uncovered many artifacts from the medieval and Renaissance periods, such as ropes, footwear, ceramics, shipwrecks, a large number of weapons, and the remains of butchered animals.
“The gauntlet was found some 40 meters [131 feet] out in the harbor,” Hegdal said. “So it could only have been dropped from a ship, though we have no good explanation for how something like that could have happened.”
Gauntlets were metal medieval gloves usually made out of iron. They protected a person’s hands and wrists and were invented in the 14th century, which was when European knights and soldiers began transitioning from the use of chain mail to plate armor.
It is rare to find such an early example of a gauntlet because metal corrodes quickly when buried in the ground. In addition, iron was often reused and forged into new objects during the Middle Ages.
“It was found more or less directly below an area-wide layer of blue clay, which must have come from a significant quick clay slide which we have dated to about 1380,” Hegdal said. “The gauntlet might have been lost in relation to the landslide itself and the resulting waves.”
Not much of the Oslo gauntlet has remained intact. It is mostly just an imprint of the armor. In X-rays, archaeologists were able to see remnants of small nails and a possible buckle. It is unclear whether the gauntlet was old or new at the time it was lost.
Right after the Black Death, commercial goods that were rare before, such as plate armor, became abundant since much of the population had been decimated. Hegdel says the gauntlet could’ve been rusted and broken from neglect.
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