Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2005, Page 21

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 19
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Archaeologia Islandica

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