The family went inside and discovered the culprit was a meteorite that had crashed through the roof at some point during the winter.
Knut Jorgen Roed Odegaard, an astrophysicist at the University of Oslo, said only 14 meteorites have been found in Norway since 1848. He said the object that hit the cabin likely fell sometime around March 1, when several meteor sightings were reported.
"We took in hundreds of tips and have been searching for bits of meteorites," Odegaard said. "And then we find this right here in Oslo!"
Hans Amundsen, a member of NASA's astrobiological institute, said the meteorite was "very rare" because "you can see in its cross-section that it contains bits of many different particles that are compressed together."
