Náttúrufræðingurinn - 1995, Page 68

tions existed in Iceland. It wasn't until 1971
that Iceland procured a mounted Great Auk,
when a specimen was bought at an auction at
Sotheby's in London, l'or £ 9300 (cf. Bennett
1971 and Tinker 1971). The money was ob-
tained in a public collection in only four days,
clearly expressing the general interest of Ice-
landers to acquire such a specimen, the only
bird species known to have become extinct in
Iceland. The specimen, which is Icelandic in
origin, had been in the possession of its pro-
curer, Danish Count Raben and his family,
since 1821. The bird is mentioned by Grieve
(1885), who says it is badly stuffed, but this is
certainly not true, compared to the Great Auk's
surviving relatives. A Great Auk egg and a
composite skeleton has also been available in
Iceland since 1954, when such items were
bought from Harvard University, cf.
Tomkinson & Tomkinson (1966). All these
relics are kept at the Icelandic Institute of
Natural History in Reykjavik.
Skeletal remains of Great Auks have been
found at four sites in Iceland, at Reykjavík, the
Westman Islands, Hafnir, and Býjarsker
(Newton 1861, Matthías Þórðarson 1944,
Þorkell Grímsson 1974, Meldgaard 1988).
Materials from the first two sites are deposited
at the Icelandic Institute of Natural History in
Reykjavík, and from the first one also some at
the Zoological Museum in Copenhagen.
Bengtson (1984) believed the decline of the
Great Auk world population took place long
before excessive exploitation by humans. He
hypothesized that climatic change, direct or
indirect, primarily brought about the popula-
tion decline. Climate may have affected the
population in past millennia but Great Auks
were still pretty common at the advent of se-
vere human persecution around 1500. The
population is likely to have survived if such
heavy human interference had not taken place.
If climate was an influencing factor, the
Great Auk may have been more common
around the Settlement of Iceland in the 9th and
lOth century AD. Climate was generally
warmer then, but this changed at the beginning
of the Little Ice Age at around 1300 (cf.
Ogilvie 1984).
The distribution of skeletal remains that
have been unearthed so far in Iceland largely
traces the distribution of known nesting sites
in the south and southwestern parts. Future
studies of middens will undoubtedly increase
our knowledge of the life history of Great
Auks in Iceland. The Breiðafjörður skerries,
West-Iceland, are most likely to have sup-
ported breeding Great Auks at the time of the
Settlement. If so it is hypothesized that the
birds were exterminated by the locals shortly
after the islands were settled.
The expertise of identifying bones of wild
animals has been greatly lacking in Iceland.
Sucli materials from archaeological excava-
tions have thus not received the attention of
Icelandic scholars it deserves. In recent years
the American zooarchaeologists McGovern
and Amorosi have studied a number of bone
collections and greatly increased our knowl-
edge in this field (cf. Amorosi 1989, 1991,
Amorosi et al. 1994). Yet, the bone collections
studied so far have failed to unveil Great Auk
bones. This is possibly because rather few
places have been studied, with fewer still of
these in coastal areas. Usually the bone depos-
its studied have not been old enough (from be-
fore 1200) and sometimes soil conditions do
not favour preservation.
PÓSTFANG HÖFUNDAR/AuTHOR'S
ADDRESS
Ævar Petersen
Náttúrufræðistofnun Islands/
Icelandic Institute of Natural History
Pósthólf/Box 5320
IS-125 REYKJAVÍK
Iceland
NeTFANG/E-MAIL aevar@nattfs.is
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