Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2010, Page 56

RAMONA HARRISON
Figure 2. The Skuggi site (rectangle), located uphill from Hörgá and Skuggabrú (arrow). The
picture also shows linear drainage ditches to the north and west of the site that were dug in the late
20th c. The mountains across the valley form part of Hörgárdalur ’s northern edge (facing NNE).
the 14th c (Hreiðarsdóttir 2008:233). The
densely forested area on Staðartunga land
well into the 18th c could also have been
a reason naming Skuggi after a dark and
cool place (Hreiðarsdóttir, personal com-
munication, September 24, 2010).
The name Skuggi is thus modern
(‘Shadow’) and as it implies, the site is on
the colder North facing side of the
Hörgárdalur. The scale of the visible ruin
complex (surveyed by Hreiðarsdóttir et
al. 2008:233) indicates a very small farm.
While the original farm name is lost and
there are no known documentary refer-
ences, the site is on land owned by the
nearby larger (and still occupied)
Staðartunga farm less than 3 km away. It
seems highly probable that the Skuggi
site was at some point a tenant of the
much larger Staðartunga. Staðartunga
farm itself was an independent farm and
was at various times owned by the
Möðruvellir monastery (Hreiðarsdóttir et
al 2008:230).
In 2008, the Skuggi site was success-
fully cored and test trenched, discovering
a medieval midden. A larger scale midden
excavation was carried out in 2009 and
revealed that the trenched midden overlies
and infills an earlier underlying structure
which appears to be an early Viking Age
building. (Harrison 2008, 2010, Harrison
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