Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2002, Page 121

Enduring Impacts: Viking Age Settlement in Iceland and Greenland
through the Icelandic winter and need
good quality fodder, especially if the herd
is to be kept milking throughout the year.
The sites selected by settlers favoring a
cattle based economy can therefore be
suggested to have a reasonable access to
the sea, to be not covered in dense forest
and to have natural meadows to provide
winter fodder for the cows. The mead-
ows producing the best quality hay are
wet-meadows on river banks or in river
estuaries which are periodically, or some-
times even permanently, submerged by
shallow and slow moving water.
(Incidentally, wet-meadows of this kind
are all but absent in the more heavily pro-
filed Greenland). In these conditions a
variety of sedges can grow (e.g. Carex
cryptocarpa, Carex vulgaris) which are
ideal fodder for cattle and which early
modern agricultural commentators con-
sidered no worse or even better fodder
than grass-fodder produced in improved
hay fields (Þorvaldur Thoroddsen 1908-
22 II, 418-419; III, 148-152). The wet-
land areas where this sort of fodder can
be procured are the same areas which are
likely to have been free from birch forest
at the time of the Iandnám. It is therefore
not surprising that in medieval times we
find large estates or clusters of farms
dominating environments of this sort,
whereas middle-sized farms tend to be
more evenly spread in environments
where there must have been dense forest
at the time of the landnám.
Sheep and goats do not require the
high-quality fodder demanded by milch-
cows. Considering that much of both
lowland Iceland and Greenland was cov-
ered with forest at the time of the land-
nám one could easily assume that the less
demanding caprines had been favored by
the early settlers during the first critical
years of settlement. This would have
given them more options in their choice
of place and a greater flexibility in their
economic strategies. Settlements in a
caprine based economy would be located
on the basis of access to pasture and
would not be confmed to the relatively
limited areas where grass can be pro-
cured for winter fodder. Although sites
like Aðalból in the Eastern interior sug-
gest that by the llth or 12th centuries
specialized sheep stations had been
established (Amorosi 1996, 197-206),
making use of the vast summer pastures
of the central highlands, it seems that this
sort of specialization was a secondary
development. The lOth century site of
Hofstaðir is situated in a highland area
which, in early modem times at least,
was not favored for cattle farming but
was considered ideal for sheep. In spite
of this, cattle bones account for fully
25% of the domestic part of the animal
bone assemblage. The same is also true
of the even more marginal site of
Sveigakot. As this pattern is repeated in
all early sites, both in Iceland and
Greenland, we must conclude that the
settlers of both islands had a preference
for a cattle based economy and sought
out sites with the right sort of conditions
for cattle farming.
On this basis we can suggest a three-
fold division of Icelandic settlements
based on environmental type and access
to resources which can then be related to
the order in which the Icelandic country-
side was occupied in the 9th and lOth
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