Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2002, Qupperneq 100

Orri Vésteinsson, Thomas H. McGovern &
Christian Keller
ENDURING IMPACTS: SOCIAL AND
ENVIRONMENTAL ASPECTS OF VIKING AGE
SETTLEMENT IN ICELAND AND GREENLAND
Comparison of archaeological, paleoecological and historical evidence from the
Norse colonies in Greenland and Iceland suggests that the initial settlement of both
countries was dominated by a small number of leaders who established a tight pat-
tem of agricultural settlements based on animal husbandry, primarily cattle, sub-
sidised by hunting and gathering. The evidence indicates that the distinctive sub-
sistence economies and the social landscape created in the initial phase was to
endure for hundreds of years. This imported economic strategy, suited to maintain-
ing a particular social structure, had serious long term impacts on the local flora and
soils and proved to be undynamic and unresponsive to change, creating grave prob-
lems for the Icelanders in the Late Middle Ages and early modem times and con-
tributed to the extinction of the Greenlanders in the 15th century.
Orri Vésleinsson, Fornleifastofnun Islands, Bárugatu 3, 101 Reykjavík, ICELAND,
orri@instarch. is
Thomas H McGovern, Dept. of Anthropology, Hunter College, CUNY, 695 Park
Ave, NYC 10021, USA, nabo@voicenet.com
Christian Keller, Center for Viking and Medieval Studies, University of Oslo, P.O.
Box 1016, Blindern, N-0315 Oslo, NORWAY, christian.keller@iakn.uio.no
Keywords: Settlement, Human Impacts, lceland, Greenland, Archaeology
Historical Ecology of North Atlantic
Settlement
The colonization of the islands of the
North Atlantic during the Viking Age (ca.
AD 750-1050) closed the last longstand-
ing gap in human settlement of the cir-
cumpolar north, and produced the fírst
contact between the peoples of Europe
and North America. The process of dis-
covery, migration, and colonization from
Scandinavia and the British Isles north-
wards and westwards to Shetland,
Orkney, Faroe, Iceland, Greenland, and
(briefly) Vínland/Newfoundland has
long been the subject of scholarly study
(Adolf Friðriksson 1994, Jones 1985). In
the 19th and early 20th century most
research was carried out by philologists
and documentary historians (e.g. Rafn
ed. 1837, Finnur Magnússon & Rafn eds.
1838-45, Kaalund 1877-81, Maurer
1874, Valtýr Guðmundsson 1889,
Schönfeld 1902) aided by a few pioneer-
ing archaeologists (in particular Bruun
1895, 1896, 1900, 1902, 1903, 1904,
1918, 1928, also Holm 1884a, 1884b)
and environmental scientists (Winge in
Bruun 1918, Iversen 1935, Þorvaldur
Archaeologia Islandica 2 (2002) 98-136