Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2004, Side 59

Some Notes on Earthworks and Dykes in Iceland and in the North Atlantic
'great chains' - or the 'infield complexes',
as one could call them. The farms locat-
ed within one such dyke system have
obvious similarities with the 'large com-
plex settlements' known from Iceland
and Greenland, (see Vésteinsson,
McGovem & Keller 2002). More often
than not, the later parish churches are
located inside these complexes. As for
place names, it seems that the majority of
names indicating rather late farm divi-
sions (i.e. names ending in bo-, -hus-,
gard-, tun- etc.) are found within the
complexes. In Áseral, a mountain valley
in the interior of Vest-Agder county, the
farms Underberg, Ábo, Gard, Austrhus
and Ásland are located in the vicinity of
the parish church. A common hill dyke
surrounded all these farms. In Lista, also
in Vest-Agder, this was the case with the
farms Huseby, Lunde, Torp and Hauge,
plus a number of lesser settlements.
Some of these names suggest a rather late
farm division. But how late? In one case
do we get more substantial information
regarding when one such complex was
partitioned. A raised stone still standing
in the dyke dividing Lunde from Huseby
has a runic inscription stating that 'her
skipter morkunne', i.e. 'here is the bound-
ary between the farms'. The inscription is
dated to the early 12th century. Provided
that the mnic stone is as old as the dyke
itself, this might indicate that the com-
plex settlements were broken up in the
Early Middle Ages (cf. Stylegar 2001).
Social and economic background
The Norwegian legal historian Absalon
Taranger thought it likely that the origi-
nal hill dykes fenced oflf whole hamlets
('grender'), even if a 'grend' was com-
prised of several farms (Taranger
1907:272). In a similar vein, J. Store
Clouston argued that many Orkney town-
ships, judging from their great size and
the written recordings conceming them,
had never been single farms at all, but
always considerably greater areas
(Clouston 1932:347f.). But what kind of
social and economic organisation can
account for these complexes? After all,
the hill dykes circumscribing one such
complex must (for obvious reasons, i.e.
the practical needs of animal husbandry)
have been constructed in one, great oper-
ation (cf. Ronneseth 2001). It is clear that
not only was a great deal of planning
involved in this operation, but also -
probably - a great deal of force, or the
threat of force.
Farms lying within the 'infield com-
plexes' in Rogaland and Vest-Agder have
yielded some of the most important Late
Iron Age and Viking Age archaeological
finds in SW Norway. This, together with
the characteristic features discussed ear-
lier (dominance of 'young' name types,
location of parish churches etc.) and the
degree of cooperation necessary for the
homelands-commons system to function
within such 'great chains' of hill dykes,
suggest that the W Norwegian 'infield
complexes' are in fact large complex set-
tlements that might have been organised
on an estate basis, probably with a num-
ber of dependant settlements. The break-
ing up of these estate complexes could in
fact, then, be related not only to the
establishment of individual tax farms, but
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