Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2006, Side 45

THE LEIRVÍK “B0NHÚSTOFTIN” AND THE EARLY CHRISTIANITY OF THE FaROE ISLANDS, AND BEYOND
played in their respective societies. Many
of the Irish sites may have primarily func-
tioned as monastic centres and these, by
their nature, contained houses and huts.
The North Atlantic sites, on the other
hand, functioned as proprietary churches
attached to major farmsteads and did not
have a residential function. This single
difference in the function of the two types
of ecclesiastical site may well provide a
satisfactory explanation for their differ-
ence in scale.
Finally, up until recently it could
be argued that the Ireland’s Early Medie-
val churches differed in one major respect
from the typical churches of the North
Atlantic region, being built of stone, or
wood, rather than of turf. The turf-built
construction of many of the churches from
the Faroe Islands, Iceland and Greenland
made them distinctive and contributed
towards the conception of these buildings
as almost representative icons of the dis-
tinctive culture of Viking-age Christianity
in the North Atlantic region; in a sense
construction methods and materials com-
bine to define a culturally definable form.
While it is of course true that the archae-
ology of early Christianity in the region is
unique and distinctive in an overall sense,
it is no longer possible to view these turf-
built churches as truly unique cultural
phenomena. This is due to the recent
discovery of a pre-Viking Age turf-built
church on the small island monastery of
Illaunloughan, Co. Kerry (White Mar-
shall and Walsh 2005, 23-27, 152-155,
figs. 17-19) (Fig. 10).
It has long been recognised that
literary evidence exists for the construc-
tion of sod or earthern churches in Early
Medieval Ireland. In Tirechán’s late sev-
enth-century Life of Patrick, for instance,
there are two mentions of ‘acclessiam
terrenam’ (Bieler 1979, 144, 158-159).
The excavations on Illaunloughan, how-
ever, have produced the first archaeologi-
cal evidence for the practise. Here, it was
revealed that during the primary phase
of settlement, dated by both radiocarbon
determinations and artefacts to between
the mid-seventh and the mid-eighth cen-
turies, three domestic huts and a small
church were constructed, with sod being
a primary component of each of the struc-
tures (ibid, 11-36). A number of burials
were also associated with this phase of
the site, and the ecclesiastical settlement
was enclosed by a low curvilinear wall.
The walls of the church, which measured
2m N-S by c.6m E-W internally, were
formed of sod retained at the bases by
double rows of upright slabs. The evi-
dence indicated that the roof may have
been supported on posts at the gable ends,
independently of the walls.
Apart from including turf in its
construction, of course, the Illaunloughan
church is quite different in dimensions and
structure from the North Atlanticchapels.
It is also worth noting that the earliest
Icelandic chapels (Þórarinsstaðir, Neðri
Ás and Hofstaðir) were initially built of
timber, with the turf walls being added
later. Nevertheless, while the importance
of the Illaunloughan excavation results
are manifold, in the present context their
relevance is simply that they demonstrate
that a distinctive cultural characteristic
of the churches of the North Atlantic
region is not unique, finding broad paral-
lel in earlier contexts in Ireland. It would
be unwise to speculate on whether the
church-building tradition of the North
Atlantic region owes anything to Ireland
on this evidence alone, however, though
the possibility should not be dismissed
out of hand.
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