Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2005, Page 21

Archaeological Excavations at Vatnsfjörður 2003-04
settling in a new land would be influ-
enced by a lifetime of acquired knowl-
edge about his or her environment and
would therefore look to settle in an area
where that knowledge would be more
useful than in an unknown and alien
environment.
The assumption of Vestfirðir as a
backward and poor region came into
being during a period when the area had
lost most of its economic base and was
forced to rely primarily on agriculture,
which reduced the region to poverty.
This picture of Vestfirðir, created by his-
torians in the 18th and 19th centuries,
was based on the general idea of continu-
ity in Icelandic society. The society of
that period was thought to have remained
more or less the same and thus it could be
used as a model for earlier periods - an
idea that has persisted up to the present
without critique. Archaeologists have
also been influenced by this notion and
therefore have not attempted to develop
research designs that would question or
contradict this assumption.
The historical view is that this
landscape is agriculturally poor, there-
fore initial settlers of Iceland would not
want to settle this region while there were
better prospects still available. This
argument and its corollary, that the set-
tlers of this region must have been poor
and continued to be so throughout
Icelandic history, does not hold water.
The archaeological evidence emerging
from Vestfirðir today is both producing
the same type of material as elsewhere in
Iceland as well as showing that the area
was based on a very different economy
(Edvardsson 2004). The area was poor in
agriculture but that alone is not proof of
an inferior economy; only that it was dif-
ferent.
The Vatnsíjörður farm is certain-
ly situated in an area where agriculture
would be considered average at best so
the agricultural resources alone cannot
explain the economic prosperity and
accumulation of wealth from the begin-
ning of the settlement until the 16th cen-
tury. One of the most important econom-
ic factors within the political system of
Viking Age Iceland was the control over
natural resources and their distribution.
Any farmer intending to elevate himself
to the position of chieftain had to locate
his farm in a place where such control
was possible. It is quite likely that the
first settlers of any region in Iceland
actually looked for such a site for their
farms. It is also quite likely that in some
cases such location was successful
wherein in other locations it was not.
In Vestfirðir the main resources
were fish, stranding (both whale and
other), driftwood and oil (cod and shark
liver oil), all of which were important for
the Icelandic economy during the Viking
Age. A farmer who was in a position to
control the distribution of these resources
was in a position to gain wealth and
power. Vatnsljörður became a successful
power base because of its ownership over
a number of farms in Vestfirðir and of its
position in ísafjarðardjúp where it had
direct control over the route between
Strandir, the southem part of Vestfirðir
and the northem part of the Vestfirðir
peninsula. It was also in a good position
to watch over any traffic in the fjord of
ísafjarðardjúp. The region in the bottom
of Isafjarðardjúp was a place where peo-
ple from Strandir, traveling over the
heath of Steingrímsfjarðarheiði, and the
southern part of Vestfirðir, traveling over
Þorskaljarðarheiði, gathered at certain
times of the year to buy dried fish
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