Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2002, Page 95

Brattahlíð reconsidered
few kilometres. So far, 11 of these com-
plexes have been located (and more are
likely to follow), representing a medieval
society, where the chieftains were in con-
trol of the land and owned the churches.
The only exception seems to be the large
Episcopal seat at Garðar, where the dom-
inance of the church is more apparent.
I realize that the division of the promi-
nent farms in the Norse society of
Greenland is a rather controversial theo-
ry, raising several questions to be
answered.
Why, one might ask, was the Norse
society in Greenland arranged in this
way? In contemporary societies of the
other North European countries, the
church had a much more powerful posi-
tion within society. The reason for this
could be that the Norse society in
Greenland, in contrast to the other Nordic
countries, seems to have remained a
Viking age type society all through the
existence of the settlement.
When Christianity was introduced in
Scandinavia during the lOth century, it
did not change the existing social struc-
tures considerably. The chieftains owned
the churches and remained in control of
their land. This so-called proprietary
church system, however, was brought to
an end during the 12th century, and was
replaced by the independent church - lib-
ertas ecclesiae - transferring power and
wealth from the chieftains to the church
and, thus, changing the structure of the
societies completely.
This, naturally, was not a popular tran-
sition in the North Atlantic societies,
which were ruled by individual chief-
tains. In Iceland, it seems that the old
proprietary church system remained until
the end of the 13th century, but in
Greenland it was probably never intro-
duced, due to the remoteness of this
country (Ameborg 1991).
This situation may explain why the
large chieftain farms, and not the church,
dominated the society in 15th century
Norse Greenland. This society simply
never went through the church reforms
like the remaining Nordic countries.
Instead, it developed independently until
the settlement was abandoned sometime
during the 15th century AD.
On the other hand, no simple explana-
tion can be ofifered as to why they decid-
ed to separate the prominent farms.
Keeping the church farms close to the
chieftain farms (as is the case in
Qinngua) would appear as a more logical
and practical arrangement. Perhaps they
chose to make this division, because
most of these rather marginal areas
(according to European standards) sim-
ply could not sustain two large farms at
the same site. Dividing the farms would
then make more sense, in order to
increase the production as much as possi-
ble.
Another important question to be
answered is to what degree these farm
sites are contemporary? The theoretical
framework presented in this article
depends on the assumption that the ruins
found on the farm sites mostly represent
the settlement pattern in the fmal settle-
ment phase, which makes the farm sites
mutually comparable.
Even though it seems a likely assump-
tion, we cannot know this with certainty,
since research has not yet provided much
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