Norwegian SciTech News

29/04/2025

👉 Think of it: Norwegian 🇳🇴 Vikings had 50 times more swords ⚔️ and other weapons 🗡️ than their neighbours, the Danes! If swords were the handguns of the day, the Norwegians were armed to the teeth 🦷 !
The latest episode 🎤 of 63 Degrees North is OUT, and it explores the question of Viking violence – more specifically, how researchers used 1000 year old clues to figure out that Norwegian 🇳🇴 Vikings were MUCH more violent than their nearest 🇩🇰 neighbors – and they figured out WHAT were the likely reasons it was this way!

They found their answers in ancient bones ☠️ , but also in grave goods ⚔️ , in runestones 🪨 and DIRT!

We love this story because it's an inside view of how scientists from very different disciplines worked together on the riddle they found in Viking bones. 🎧 Listen and share! Link in first comment.

17/02/2025

👉Most of us don't think twice about how we're going to cook our evening meal 🍲. But in much of sub-Saharan Africa, many, many people cook with charcoal or firewood🔥. That's a huge problem, no matter how you look at it. Listen🎧 to the latest episode of 63 Degrees North🎤, where we talk to one researcher working on a solar-powered alternative that can even cook when the sun🌞 goes down!

Rethinking how Africa cooks – one pot of beans at a time

11/02/2025

Visitors to the beautiful Norwegian arctic archipelago of Svalbard are unwittingly carrying unwanted hitchhikers.

Non-native, invasive species are among the world’s biggest environmental problems. Svalbard has been unaffected – up until now.

06/02/2025

👉 It's Sámi National Day today in Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia! Check out 🎉 writer Sølvi Normannsen's beautifully illustrated article about what today's Sámi reindeer herders in Norway and Sweden think of the world changing around them and what that means for their livelihood. 🦌
And did you know that there are eight seasons in Sámi culture? Link to the story in comments! 👇

04/02/2025

By examining whale bones dating from 3500 BCE to the eighteenth century CE and drawn from museum collections from across Europe, a group of archaeologists have figured out that the North Atlantic right whale (Eubalaena glacialis)) and grey whale (Eschrichtius robustus) were essentially eliminated from the North Atlantic by the 1800s.

Several whale species disappeared from Europe long before whaling became a major industry. Two are now considered extinct in Norway.

30/01/2025

When the manager of the Sverresborg Folk Museum and a self-taught architect found a skeleton at the bottom of a well at the museum in 1938, they weren't quite sure of the significance of the find.

Now researchers at the NTNU University Museum and their colleagues from the Directorate for Cultural Heritage and the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research (NIKU) have confirmed the man lived in the late 1100s and was undoubtedly a man described in Sverre's Saga, which describes the struggle for the Norwegian throne after the death of King Sigurd Jorsalfare's death in 1130.

The saga describes how the king's men, the Birkebeinere fought at Sverresborg, which was a fortress, and the victors, the Baglers, took all the valuables in the fortress, burned everything down, and threw a dead man in the fortress well, covering him with stones.

The bishop's men plundered the king's fortress. Then they threw a dead man into the well to poison it. Now we know more about the deceased.

24/01/2025

👉It's that time of year, when you're probably lacing up your running shoes and planning on training more. 🥳
But should you include high intensity interval training as part of your weekly plan? 🤨The experts speak!👩‍🏫

An easy way to better health, or gruelling toil that is also unbearably boring? Opinions about high-intensity interval training are many and varied.

01/11/2024

Rarely has there been a US presidential race where the population is so evenly divided on their choice of candidates. One NTNU researcher currently in the US wonders if the concept of wokeness will tip the scales in the election on November 5.

The presidential race appears to be a dead heat ahead of the United States election on 5 November, but wokeness is ‘an unexploded bomb’.

01/11/2024

Helping overweight moms with polycystic o***y syndrome to understand what they can do to minimize the effects of these condictions on her children.

Obesity combined with the hormone disorder PCOS in mothers can cause health problems for her children both at birth and later in life.

22/10/2024

First overripe fruit and spoiled meat, next... diseases?

An artificial nose can detect food that has gone off. Now it's on the trail of diseases. Best of all, it uses a familiar technology.

17/10/2024

These flies may look the same, but they're not. Why do we care? "It’s important that we have an overview of the biodiversity around us. This means that we have to study inconspicuous, but species-rich groups. We live in a time where biodiversity is under threat, including unknown species," the NTNU research who did this study says. Vitenskapsmuseet

There are millions of species on Earth that are still unknown to us. Researchers call these species ‘biological dark matter’, but new methods can provide us with a better overview more quickly.

16/10/2024

The pandemic had a huge effect on primary and secondary students. Many countries are experiencing a trend that is also happening in Norway: Students refusing to return to public schools. Is private school the answer? Norwegian academics weigh in.

New research shows that school refusal may be linked to educational policy guidelines and the way the state school system is organized.