Climate breakdown sees melting ice reveal 3,000-year-old shoe and ‘objects we didn’t even know existed’

In little more than 15 years, climate breakdown has been responsible for the disappearance of hundreds of square kilometres of ancient Norwegian glaciers and ice patches, according to the latest estimates.

While an ominous symptom of global heating, the retreat of this mountainous ice – often in remote and seemingly desolate locations – has also led to certain discoveries said to “shift the boundaries of our understanding” of a world long-forgotten.

Among the most extraordinary of the hundreds of items discovered frozen in time in Norway’s thawing mountain ranges are a size 36 shoe lost by an inhabitant of the Bronze Age more than 3,000 years ago.