The Vikings: A Very Short Introduction (15 page)

Landnám

14. The bay at Tjørnuvik, Faroes: site of a Norse cemetery
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Early democrats or environmental catastrophe

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in Iceland?

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Most Icelanders will tell you that their country was colonized from
tlantic

Norway, starting in 874, and that Ingólfr Arnarsson was the first settler. The legend says that while exploring the coast Ingólfr tossed a wooden post from his high seat into the sea and followed it until it washed ashore at what was to become the Icelandic capital at Reykjavik. Again the first colonists were said to have emigrated from Norway to escape the tyranny of Haraldr Finehair. Similarly, there were a few Irish hermits but when the Norse first arrived they soon left. At the end of the settlement period, in 930, a special law code was enacted and an open-air assembly, the Althing, was established at Thingvellir. Thus goes the origin myth of a nation that proclaims itself to be the world’s first democracy, with the Althing as its first parliament.

In fact this traditional account of the Icelandic
landnám
is provided by two written sources, set down at least 300 years later, which in turn were the basis of the medieval sagas upon which 19th-century 99

Icelandic nationalism was founded.
Íslendingabók
, or The Book of Icelanders, was written by the priest Ari þorgilsson, (
c
.1122–33) and emphasizes the constitutional and ecclesiastical development of Iceland.
Landnámabók
, or The Book of Settlements, is an even later 13th-century source, which gives the names and histories of
c
.400 settlers. It is now seen as an attempt to give the Icelandic landscape a history combined with a post-hoc justification for medieval land-ownership patterns. It can no longer be used as an accurate description of persons and events in the 9th–11th centuries, although the Icelandic sagas based their account on it.

In reality, Iceland is closer to Scotland (795 kilometres) than it is to Norway (950 kilometres) and it is more likely that at least some of the first settlers came from the British Isles. No archaeological trace has been found of the Irish priests, or
Papar
, whom
Íslendingabók
claimed inhabited Iceland when the Norse arrived. However,
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modern DNA studies have revealed that approximately 20 per cent
g

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of the Icelandic gene pool probably originated in the Irish Sea
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region. This research has also demonstrated that while 75 per cent
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of male ancestors were from Scandinavia, only 37.5 per cent of females were, supporting the idea that the first colonists may have comprised a Hiberno-Norse element with Irish wives and slaves.

Some place names may also relate to Norse contact with Ireland and Scotland prior to the settlement of Iceland, and there are Gaelic loan words, including the word for bull. It has even been proposed that the sagas, the heart of Icelandic identity and nationalistic feelings, actually owe their cultural roots to Irish oral poetry.

The early burials also reflect Irish influence on the costume of the early inhabitants of Iceland. Although there are 316 known pre-Christian burials, the majority were excavated in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and recorded in varying amounts of detail. Of those skeletons that can be sexed, males outnumber females by about two to one. Icelandic burials follow the general Norwegian tradition, but the graves are poorer and not at all monumental. Five boat burials are known, but all are small rowing boats used as coffins. The graves 100

15. The North Atlantic routes

are generally found under low mounds located near to farms, and the majority are in small cemeteries which probably relate to family groups. As in Scotland, there is little evidence for cremation, apart from one possible burial recently excavated at Hulduholl, near Mosfell. Ornaments and weapons are found, but many graves contain only a few items, and none are rich. Unlike Scandinavia, tools are rare, suggesting a shortage of raw materials and a low calibre tool-making industry. Iron was in short supply and heavily reused. On the other hand, a high proportion of men were accompanied by their ponies, and some by dogs. Several female burials reflect the mixed cultural origin of settlers, including a woman buried with a pair of tongue-shaped brooches and a small bell at Kornsá, a second whose grave-goods included a whalebone plaque, a trefoil brooch, and a ringed pin at Hafurbjarnarstaðir, and a third at Kroppur with a ringed pin and a strap end, probably made in the British Isles.

sg

kin

The traditional date for the founding of Iceland in 874 has also
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become discredited. A number of well preserved farmsteads have
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been engulfed by volcanic eruptions and tephrochronology, using the ash layers as dating horizons, can provide precise chronologies.

In the 1990s radiocarbon dating gave some very early dates, in the 7th and 8th centuries, but there were problems with the dates, including the likelihood that they were based on charcoal from ancient timber, and they have subsequently been discounted. On the other hand, most archaeologists now accept that settlement probably began a little before 870, with rapid and aggressive colonization leading to a drastic reduction in birch and increase in grass by 890–900, as the settlers chopped down trees and created pasture. Research has also begun to focus on the process of creation of a new society, rather than on the date of the
landnám
per se.

Landnámabok
probably does give a reasonable idea of the early settlement pattern. Although Iceland has a surface area of over 103,000 square kilometres, the centre is volcanic desert, and only one-sixth is habitable.
Landnámabok
mentions 598 farmsteads, 102

and all but 11 of these have been identified, scattered all around the coastline. It appears that the first settlers claimed large amounts of good farming land, and subsequently gave some to friends and relatives, who became their economic dependants and political followers. By the 11th century there were
c
.4,000 farmsteads, a figure that remained stable during the medieval and post-medieval periods. By the late 11th century the population had probably reached between 40,000 and 100,000 (compared to the present-day population of 250,000). Latecomers had to make do with slices of land in-between the large estates. Instead of being a land of isolated and independent farmers of equal status, medieval Icelandic society comprised several hundred powerful farmers each in control of a considerable number of people on his own estate and having political authority over up to 3,000 lesser farmers

Landnám

and cottagers bound to the estates by ties of ownership. By the 12th century, church attendance and the payment of tithes confirmed this situation.

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The first farmsteads consisted of traditional longhouses, built in sod
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and stone, but also requiring considerable investment in timber.

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They had bow-sided walls with a doorway at one end and a hearth in the middle. This basic longhouse type was developed and modified, partitioned into separate rooms, and with extra rooms at the back. At Stöng, engulfed by volcanic ash in an eruption of Mt Hekla, the two additional rooms functioned as a dairy, and possibly a latrine or cold store. Such changes appear to be an adaptation to local conditions, both to the weather, so that shorter lengths of external wall were exposed, and to the growing shortage of suitable building timber.

Land ownership was the basis of economic as well as political power. Livelihoods depended upon stock-breeding, supplemented by fishing and fowling, rather than cereal cultivation. It appears that intensive colonization was accompanied by rapid environmental degradation. As the trees disappeared foraging animals had to be replaced by cows, and at Hofstaðir pigs and goats 103

Snorri Sturluson (1178–1241)

Snorri Sturluson was an Icelandic poet, scholar, and states-man. From the age of 3 he studied at Oddi, the cultural
centre of Iceland. He played a leading role in politics and was
twice law-speaker at the Althing. Snorri’s farm was at
Reykholt, in western Iceland. The site lies in the middle of a
wide and prosperous valley which contains some of best farm
land in Iceland. The passage-way farm has been excavated,
revealing evidence for at least two important activity areas:
wool-processing and de-lousing! Some cereal grain was also
found, but must have been imported from Europe. Snorri’s
career brought him many enemies, including King Hákon
of Norway, who had him killed in the cellar at Reykholt,
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in 1241.

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Snorri’s importance today rests upon his literary works. He
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compiled
Heimskringla
, a history of the Norse kings, which
despite including a mythological section based on sagas, is
also a key source for the early history of Iceland and Norway.

Snorri was the author of the
Prose Edda
, which preserves
fragments of 10th-century skaldic poetry, and may also have
written
Egils Saga
.

decline in proportion to cattle during the 10th century. However, cattle had to be kept indoors for much of the year, their survival dependent upon the availability of fodder. At Svalbarð, in north-east Iceland, sheep herding was important from the first phase but, as the climate declines when Europe entered the Little Ice Age, sealing also became more important. At Svalbarð there was no cereal grain although hay was gathered for fodder and to cover the floor, and peat was used for bedding, fuel, and construction. Wild 104

berries, such as bilberry and crowberry, and edible seeds and leaves were also collected.

In academic discussions of early Iceland the previous focus on
landnám
and settlement origins has been replaced by a more modern 21st-century theme of environmental disaster. It has been estimated that 60 per cent of the original natural vegetation cover of Iceland was destroyed due to woodland clearance and over-grazing, followed by soil erosion. Landscape degradation enhanced by cooling climatic conditions subjected the Viking cultural system to severe stress – in economic, demographic, and social structures.

In a society where families had become dispersed because of migration, new systems, such as
hreppur
– or agricultural cooperatives – had to replace former familial safeguards with a form

Landnám

of social services.

In summary, in the North Atlantic colonies, cultural change was
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eventually determined by environmental factors rather than by
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hybridization with an existing population, although the incoming
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colonists were by no means pure Scandinavian stock in the first
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place. The attachment to a Viking cultural identity was as much as a creation of later origin myths, at a time when it was politically expedient to look to a shared Scandinavian homeland.

105

Chapter 11

The edge of the world:

Greenland and North

America

Greenland was the most isolated of the Viking colonies and had the most extreme environment. The story of its foundation has again been derived from later written sources, principally the
Íslendingabók
(1122–32). This recounts how Eirik the Red, on a three-year exile from Iceland, reconnoitred the west coast in 981–2. Three years later he persuaded 300 Icelanders to return with him in 25 ships; only 14 ships made it. The colonists split into two groups: the larger group under Eirik settled on the south-west coast in what became known as the Eastern Settlement; a second group sailed 650 kilometres north along an inhospitable coastline before making landfall and founding the Western Settlement.

From the 11th to 12th centuries written sources mention some 190 farms in the Eastern Settlement, and a further 90 in the Western. There may have been somewhere between 2,000 and 4,000 people living on Greenland at the height of the colonies; over their total lifespan it has been suggested that
c
.25,000–35,000

settlers lived there. Given the absence of later occupation, the Norse settlement pattern is well preserved;
c
.250 farms and 106

20 churches have been identified archaeologically. In order to maximize the available grazing the farms are dispersed, as in Iceland, usually several kilometres apart and separated by mountains and swamps. Cereal cultivation was impossible; domestic animals were kept, but much energy was expended on gathering winter fodder as the cattle had to be kept indoors all winter. By the end of winter in April the farms would have been under severe stress. To supplement their diet the Greenlanders grew to depend on seals, which make up 35–70 per cent of bones found. Each of the farms invested some of their seal meat in keeping great dogs alive. These may have been used for herding sheep, and as guard dogs, but they may represent the lord’s
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e edge of th

hunting pack, split up amongst the farms to keep them fed over winter, but brought together to hunt caribou in the summer. The Greenlanders also traded skins and ivory with Iceland and Europe
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to obtain grain, salt, and iron.

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Excavations in the 1990s at a well preserved Western Settlement
reenlan

farm complex at Gård Under Sandet (or GUS) have revealed what a
d an
typical Greenlandic farm might have been like. The farm had been
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established
c
.1000, and was occupied through a series of rebuildings until
c
.1350. It comprised some 38 rooms, of which 12