Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2002, Page 132

Orri Vésteinsson, Thomas H. McGovern, Christian Keller
meters of prime sod, illustrating the envi-
ronmental bill for such lavish architectur-
al display. Feasting was a central part of
the chiefly societies of the North-
Atlantic, a means to cement bonds of
friendship and dependence and to
impress competitors, and reflects the
prestige-based social economy of the set-
tlement age. The multiple messages
embedded in a successful feast that
included sea físh, eggs, milk, cheese,
lamb, beef and even some beer certainly
included the basic idea of the Skallagrímr
text: “this farm stands on many feet”.
Athough it is possible that the degree of
specialization implied in the Skallagrímr
account and its neat manorial manage-
ment may in fact not have begun to
develop until some time after the land-
nám period, Skallagrímr’s overall strate-
gy of a wide claim followed by selective-
ly inflicted dependence on late-comers
seems to have been at least one of the
models actually followed. It is a feasable
strategy not only economically, but polit-
ically as well. The taking of land was not
only a question of adaptation and
resource management, or a question of
biological survival. It was equally much
a question of social and political survival,
and this must have affected the settle-
ment strategy as well as the later settle-
ment pattem.
Thus the I3th century saga account of
Skallagrímr and his strategies appears
not so much inaccurate, as incomplete in
its description of the fast changing envi-
romental and social context of first settle-
ment.
A cknowledgements.
Thanks are due to the generous support
of the US National Science Foundation,
Office of Polar Programs, the Wenner-
Gren Foundation for Anthropological
Research, the National Geographic
Society, the PSC-CUNY grants program
and the Icelandic Research Council. The
help of Claus Andreasen, Jette Ameborg,
Lisa Barlow, Joel Berglund, Noel
Broadbent, Paul and Phil Buckland,
Andy Dugmore, Adolf Friðriksson,
Garðar Guðmundsson, Sædís
Gunnarsdóttir, Jón Haukur
Ingimundarson, Ingrid Mainland, Paul
Mayewski, Astrid Ogilvie, Guðmundur
Ólafsson, Sophia Perdikaris, Ian
Simpson, Mjöll Snæsdóttir, Clayton
Tinsley, Daniel E. Vasey and Sandra
Wolfson in both field and lab work is
gratefully acknowledged. This paper is a
product of the North Atlantic Biocultural
Organization (NABO).