Ólafía : rit Fornleifafræðingafélags Íslands. - 01.05.2007, Side 113

When it comes to the role of Iceland it
is unlikely that hunting of walrus took
place in the country in this period, but
Icelanders could possibly have played a
part in hunting on the Greenlandic
coasts or at least be influenced by
theWhen it comes to the role of Iceland
it is unlikely that hunting of walrus took
place in the country in this period, but
Icelanders could possibly have played a
part in hunting on the Greenlandic
coasts or at least be influenced by the
trade as some merchant ships stopped
over on their way back and forth from
Greenland. Finds of a walrus tusk
fragment from the trading site of Gásir
in the Gásir excavation in 2003 support
the idea of Iceland being somehow
connected to the Walrus tusk trade
(McGovern et.al. 2004).
Concerning the Russian and Baltic
areas, on the other hand, there are still
no studies of the actual trade routes and
gathering of find material except from
Novgorod, but it is likely that this area
still is the primary supplier of tusk to
the Middle East. Concerning the towns,
it seems that Staraja Ladoga by this
time has outlived its period of im-
portance internationally, and possibly
one factor could be the limitation of the
trade in Arctic luxuries as long as trade
came from the North West Atlantic
area. On the other hand Novgorod
becomes increasingly powerful until the
Hanseatic League manages to take over
the control of the trade in the high to
late medieval period.
Sigrid Cecilie Juel Hansen
__________
113