Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2004, Page 109

Excavation in Klaufanes, Northern Iceland
at least about 60 m from the farm ruin
and in the excavation no indication could
be found that the river had touched the
farm or its closest surroundings.
According to the story about the threat-
ening river in Svarfdœla it would be most
likely to expect that the farm ruin would
be severely damaged by the river or even
completely gone.
Eldjám saw that the old riverbank
might have eroded part of the field and
interpreted the story in Svarfdæla accord-
ingly, that is that Klaufí moved his farm
because the river was eroding the fíelds
NOT that the river was threatening the
fann. This he considered to be one of the
proofs why the skáli must be the same as
Klaufi built according to the sagas. In
this way Eldjám interpreted the sagas
freely to make them fit to the archaeolo-
gy but he also interprets the archaeology
freely to fit it to the Sagas and therefore
he uses a circular argument to make his
case. During the excavation in Klaufanes
the main focus was both on dating the
skáli and determining how long it was
inhabited, in order to decide if the skáli
was likely to be the skáli of Klaufi.
It will not be debated that the skáli in
Klaufanes has the shape of a skáli nor
that its shape and the shape of the long-
fire indicates that it was built in the first
few centuries of the settlement of
Iceland, although possibly up to the 1 lth
century.
Another of Eldjám's main conclu-
sions is that the skáli had been inhabited
for only a short period and he was certain
that it only showed indication of one
building phase. The main support for this
he said was the lack of finds and thin
floor layer(s).
The lack of finds is possibly an indi-
cation of short inhabitation. Still it is
right to point out that Eldjám mostly
used heavy tools to excavate and there-
fore it is likely that he might not have
noticed smaller objects that are common
finds when finer tools are used or layers
are sieved. It is also likely that more finds
would have been found had Eldjám exca-
vated the floor layer(s). In connection to
Eldjám's description of the thin floor
layer(s) it should be mentioned that lie
does not ever say how thin the floor
layer(s) is. Judging by his section draw-
ing it seems pretty thin. In the excavation
report Eldjám always talk about the floor
in singular i.e. "the floor layer" but in a
short description of the site that he pub-
lished in the book on the hundredth
anniversary of the National Museum in
1962 (Hundrað ár í Þjóðminjasafni) he
speaks of the floors in the skáli in plural
i.e. "the floor layers" (Eldjám 1962, 80).
This raises questions of whether the floor
of the skáli consisted of one layer or
many and whether or not it was as thin as
Eldjám describes. The limited raw data
that is available from the excavation
make it impossible to answer these ques-
tions. That is the reason why it is hard to
judge if the settlement in Klaufanes was
as short as Eldjám concludes although
nothing indicates the building was occu-
pied for a very long time.
As mentioned above, the floor
layer(s) does not seem to have been
excavated, neither in the skáli part nor
the kitchen part. It seems that Eldjám
assumed that what he dug was the
remains of one building phase. I think
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