Árbók Hins íslenzka fornleifafélags - 01.01.2011, Blaðsíða 144

KÁL Í KIRKJU STAÐ. UM GARÐ Í RAUÐUSKRIÐU Í AÐALDAL 143
Summary
In 1930 a sub-rectangular enclosure outside the homefield of the farm
Rauðaskriða in Northern Iceland was listed as an ancient monument. The
protection order seems to have been based on Brynjúlfur Jónsson‘s report
from 1905 where he described a churchyard at Rauðaskriða, from which a
headstone had reportedly been taken. Rauðaskriða, a major estate frequently
the seat of secular magnates, had its own private church mentioned in the
1480s and again in 1712 when it had fallen into disuse. Around 1750 a
new church was consecrated in Rauðaskriða, following a royal dispensation
sought by and granted to the proprietor, Sheriff Jón Benediktsson. This
church is known to have been dismantled following Jón‘s death in 1776.
The possibility that this could be the site of one of very few late magnates‘
churches in Iceland led to a small scale excavation in the enclosure in
2003. The excavation revealed that the encosure is not a churchyard but
a vegetable garden. No dating evidence was found in the excavation but a
circumstantial argument can be made that this enclosure must be among the
earliest surviving in Iceland, from the late 18th or early 19th century. Sheriff
Jón is known to have built a vegetable plot shortly before his death and it is
possible that the enclosure is that feature, possibly used only once or twice. It
remains a mystery where the church (or churches) at Rauðaskriða stood, but
attention is drawn to mid 20th century reports of an enigmatic feature a few
metres north of the enclosure, which also might explain how the churchyard
label got attached to the nearby vegetable plot. The paper concludes with a
plea for more research on vegetable cultivation in Iceland from the mid 18th
century onwards. Before the introduction of the potato, swede and cabbage
carbohydrates formed a negligible part of the Icelanders‘ diet but the history
of vegetable cultivation and consumption in the 18th and 19th centuries
is still poorly understood. The enclosure at Rauðaskriða is an important
monument to this quiet revolution in the foodways of the Icelanders.