Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2004, Page 39

ZOOARCHAEOLOGY, HlSTORY AND LANDSCAPE ARCHAEOLOGY AT FlNNBOGASTAÐIR IN THE 18TH CENTURY
18th century farmers needed a multi-
stranded strategy for household survival
that included elements of both a cash and
subsistence economy.
In addition to harsh social conditions,
Icelandic small farmers like the tenant
families at Finnbogastaðir also were con-
fronted by changing climate and geomor-
phological challenges to agriculture
(Ogilvie 1984 et seq). Three well dated
recent sea cores taken just off shore from
central Arneshreppur (off the farm
Gjögur mentioned in the Jarðabók
account above) by teams led by John
Andrews and Anne Jennings (INSTAAR,
U Colorado) support other paleoclimate
evidence in indicating a prolonged cold
interval in this district from 1650-1920
AD, based on carbonate accumulation
and stable isotopic variations from benth-
ic foraminifera (Andrews pers com
2003, Jennings et al 2001). By the 18th
century erosion had also seriously begun
to affect farmland all over the country. As
both the brief Jarðabók notices and the
longer accounts in the annual sheriffs
letters of the 17th-18th century indicate,
pastures and sometimes entire farmsteads
were being lost to rapid wind erosion,
destabilization of slopes, and sudden
hydrological changes in river and stream
regimes: landslides, floods, and denuded
pastures are common complaints in most
of the quarters of Iceland (Ogilvie 1984a,
2001). Many scholars somewhat devalue
the accounts of property damage in the
land registry as they suspect that the
farmers were complaining and not giving
an accurate description of their farmland
because the registry was to be used for
tax purposes. While farmers and tenants
certainly had an incentive to stress any
factors likely to reduce taxes, a range of
paleoenvironmental studies indicate that
adverse landscape changes were indeed
widespread and that cooling climate did
reduce pasture productivity and the
amount of winter fodder that could be
secured. The NW was also affected by
sea ice in both winter and (in many years
of the 18th century) in summer as well
(Ogilvie and Jónsdóttir 2000). Both the
documentary and paleoenvironmental
record starkly reveal the host of chal-
lenges facing small farmers in 18th cen-
tury NW Iceland; the coping strategies
they employed to survive are less well
understood.
From the standpoint of a tenant
farmer in 18th century NW Iceland,
many agricultural practices advocated by
enlightenment improvers (drainage
ditching, field flattening, intensive
manuring, more elaborate hay storage
facilities) were a complete waste of
scarce time and energy. Not only would
most of the improvements serve to enrich
the landlord (and probably generate a
rent increase for the tenant) but their ben-
efits would almost certainly be lost to the
improving tenant due to eviction within a
year or two. In addition, steadily worsen-
ing environmental conditions in the NW
and widespread loss of pasture area and
reduction of pasture productivity was
increasingly making agricultural intensi-
fication a losing proposition for all but
the richest farmsteads in the most pro-
tected locations. Instead of putting more
effort into agriculture, NW tenant house-
holds would have been better served by
an intensification of exploitation of wild
37