Posted on 07/04/2012 6:07:40 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
During a recent mapping of the rare virgin forest in and around the Øvre Dividalen National Park in Troms, Norway, scientists noticed some scars reappearing on the trees. Many trees had some of their bark cut away on one side, leaving marks that were hard to explain.
Arve Elvebakk of the University of TromsØ (UiT) headed the study. He worked together with Andreas Kirchhefer, an expert in dating old trees by tree-ring analysis. He had already used ancient pines to chart weather and climate conditions.
Could the cuts in the bark have been left by settlers who started farms in the Dividalen valley in 1850? These dalesmen logged the pine forest, but the scars appeared to be from long before this.
Some suggested the cuts in bark could have been made by indigenous Sami herders as markers of reindeer migration routes and indicators of territorial grazing rights – or simply as signs marking footpaths.
A third proposal was that the cuts were made by Finnish immigrants who used the trees for bark bread. In hard times with failed crops and famine at home they could cross over to Norway in search of food and game.
"How wrong we were," says Elvebakk.
The mystery was solved when the scars in the bark were dated back to the 17th and 18th centuries. This was over a century before the dalesmen arrived. There were also too many of the scars for the footpaths or reindeer routes theory to be plausible.
"It turned out that this came from the ancient Sami practice of harvesting pine bark for food," explains Elvebakk. "In a laborious process the bark was converted into flour that could be used in cooking."
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencenordic.com ...
/johnny
You’re right, as usual. ;-D
Almost as if somebody tied some saplings down and left’em that way for a couple of years.
This is a subjective measurement, but I’d say it mutes it by upwards of 50%, give or take.
For me it seems to mute it by about half, though I admit it’s a subjective measurement. It definitely appears to take some of the edge off the constant 1kHz whine.
Lol. I just knew somebody would beat me to the Euell Gibbons remarks.
I’m with stormer on this one. It’s amazing if real.
The article said that those trees in Poland were tied down by farmers to grow in a curved manner.
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