Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2006, Page 60

Christopher Callow
ries. Recent excavations have included a
handful of obviously Christian cemeteries
which began before 1100 (Vésteinsson
2000: 55-6; Zoéga 2004). So far, 316 fur-
nished burials have been found at about
160 sites. Most are in a poor state of
preservation which limits their usefulness
(Eldjám 2000: 258-61). Nevertheless
they share similarities with those in the
British Isles in as much as they are appar-
ently exclusively inhumation whereas a
significant percentage of Scandinavian
graves of the same period are cremation
burials (Eldjárn 2000: 290; cf. Byock et
al 2005). The dead tended to be buried in
individual graves, aligned roughly south-
west to north-east (with the head at the
south-west), the body supine and arms
either by their side or on top of the body
and the legs either straight or slightly bent.
Graves tended to be simple earth-cut fea-
tures but stone settings of various kinds
do occur, as do some forms of small earth
mound but of a less impressive kind than
most from mainland Scandinavia. Five
boat graves have also been discovered
so far. The dead were probably buried
clothed, to judge by the presence of occa-
sional fragments of textiles and, for many
women, brooches. Furnished adult graves
sometimes contain a range of domestic
objects (knives, cooking utensils, ves-
sels, strike-a-lights) and jewellery beads
which are not gender-specific. For adults,
men were much more likely to be buried
with weapons (swords, spears and axes
and their fittings), weights or scales and
with animals (dogs and, unusually com-
monly compared with elsewhere, horses,
of which 113 have been found), while
women were often buried with brooches
of types often found elsewhere in Scandi-
navia - most commonly oval ones - and
with bone combs.
As for many societies, we do
not have many medieval Icelandic chil-
dren’s burials at all which raises inter-
esting questions about the treatment of
dead children. While the ‘viking’ expan-
sion of which Iceland’s colonisation was
a part, may have been a predominantly
male activity, it must not have taken long
for women and children to settle too;
they may well have been present from
Iceland’s initial discovery anyway. Of
those 316 burials it has been possible to
estimate the age of about 120 individu-
als; just twelve of them were of children
among which only nine have sound
archaeological provenances (Gestsdóttir
1998a; Eldjárn 2000: 594). Assuming a
death rate like many other pre-modern
societies, there ought to be a far higher
percentage of child burials (Guy et al.
1997: 222 table 2; Sellevold 1997). The
problem is brought into focus when we
look at the medieval Christian cemeter-
ies. In the early Christian cemetery at
Keldudalur in Skagafjörður, which con-
tained invididuals without grave goods
which are arranged around a space where
a church or chapel very likely lay, about
50% of the burials were of children
(Zoéga 2004). This figure still represents
a significant difference from the accom-
panied, non-churchyard burials. In this
respect, the apparent contrast between
pagan and Christian cemeteries fits the
patterns observed elsewhere in Scandina-
via (Wicker 1998: 215). The orthodoxy is
that ‘pagan’ burial gave way to Christian
practice fairly sharply during the elev-
enth century although, given the limita-
tions of our dating evidence generally,
it is not impossible that accompanied,
mainly adult burials were contemporary
with early churchyard burial which was
deemed more appropriate for children.
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