Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2002, Side 93

Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2002, Side 93
Brattahlíð reconsidered with the church farms, they formed what could be called chieftain and church farm complexes. As seen on the distribution map, some of these complexes are easily noticed, like ruin groups 0 1 and 2, 0 28 and 29/29a, 0 64 and 66 and 0 111 and 221. But when knowing what to look for, it was possible to locate a total of 11 com- plexes in the entire Eastem Settlement. A few of the complexes were difficult to fmd; for instance the complex in Narsaq, consisting of the Dýrnes church farm (0 18) and the farm 0 17. In this case, the presumed chieftain farm was destroyed during the 19th century due to the building of the modem town Narsaq (founded in 1830). Old records state that the farm in Narsaq was very Iarge (see Ostermann 1944, 127, note 92, and Sigurður Breiðljörð 1836, 36). The vast and grassy meadows of this area must have made it one of the very best places for Norse husbandry in all of Greenland, and a natural place to fmd a chieftain farm. Another puzzling complex was the famous Hvalsey church farm (0 83) and the nearby farm (0 83a). The 0 83a farm was, in contrast to the Hvalsey church farm, not discovered until 1935 when Roussell conducted excavations in the area (Roussell 1941, 34-41). Roussell interpreted the site as a dairy farm, since no dwelling was found there. When visit- ing the site in 1999, it was possible to locate the dwelling however, making it a regular farm site. The site is likely to be among the large farms, when fully sur- veyed (hopefully within the next few years), but it is definitely larger and bet- ter situated than the more ordinary Hvalsey church farm. The most difficult to locate, however, was the Qinngua complex (0 39), with the Leiðar church and Brattahlíð. For some time, I was convinced that the church farm in Qinngua (0 39) formed a complex together with the nearby farm in Qorlortoq (0 33). But this meant that Brattahlíð would be the rather small farm 0 33 and this would not make sense according to Norlund's criteria. When surveying the Qinngua farm in 1999, I suddenly realized that both the church farm and the chieftain farm were there on the same site, but as two separate hold- ings (see fig. 5). The eastern holding with the church would then be the Leiðar church farm - and the large central one the actual Brattahlíð farm. Usually, the chieftain farms and the church farms would be situated a few kilometres apart, but in this case, the location must have been so good that both these farms could be in the same place. The same phenomenon is also noticed at the very large farm site 0 149 in Narsarsuaq in the Uunartoq fjord (see Vebæk 1991). In Narsarsuaq, there seems to be both a church farm and a very large chieftain farm in the same area. When excavating the site in 1945-48, Vebæk believed that this place was the Benedictine convent mentioned in Bárðarsson's description of Greenland. However, there is little evidence that this place should be the convent, since it appears to be just another chieftain and church farm complex. Finally, a few words about the Garðar complex, situated at the end of the 91
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Archaeologia Islandica

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