Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2006, Page 65

First steps towards an archaeolooy of children in Iceland
cent to domestic buildings (e.g. Brogiolo
1989; Haughton & Powlesland 1999). An
example has also been found in Lund, for
example, a Scandinavian urban context,
where an infant was buried under the floor
of a dwelling (Roslund 1990). This phe-
nomenon has not so far been observed in
Iceland but it does at least seem possible
that examples could have been missed
in previous rural settlement excavations,
given that so few excavations have been
taken down to ‘natural’ (Gavin Lucas
pers com; Vésteinsson 2002: 87). In Ice-
land, as elsewhere in western Europe, as
soon as Christian cemeteries were estab-
lished, babies and older children were
buried close to churches. At Keldudalur,
for example, the child burials clustered
along each long side of the church are in
a similar location to babies found in Eng-
land and elsewhere (Fig.l) (e.g. Stroud
1993). They could form part of a longer
tradition of burying children in or close
to buildings which has gone undetected.
None of the discussion above
necessarily rules out the possibility that
some people at some time or other in
Iceland or Scandinavia in the early mid-
dle ages found it convenient to abandon
children they did not want. What is harder
to find good evidence for, given the vari-
ous kinds of source material available, is
systematic child exposure such that it can
fully explain the low frequency of child
burials observed archaeologically in Ice-
land or across the viking diaspora.
Age and rite
The rarity of landnám-period children’s
burials, then, cannot yet be taken as a
measure of some kind of disrespect for
them on the part of adults nor of their
perceived inherent difference. The types
of children’s burials which appear to be
from the tenth century might give some
initial indication of attitudes towards chil-
dren. There are two burials of infants of
up to two years; five aged between seven
and twelve years; and five aged thirteen
to seventeen respectively (Gestsdóttir
1998a: 5, 17).
Despite the material poverty of
their surroundings, Iceland’s first settlers
generally continued Scandinavian prac-
tices in their new environment. Grave
good deposition is often related to age,
gender as well as the more indefinable
notion of ‘status’ and the Icelandic child
burials show the influence of all three but
not consistently. The two youngest chil-
dren have no grave goods associated with
them which suggests that they were not
seen as socially significant. At seven to
twelve years the better preserved burials
all had grave furnishings but their quanti-
ty varies considerably. They ranged from
a single knife in a cemetery where oth-
erwise the adult burials were furnished
reasonably well (Ytra-Garðshorn; Eld-
járn 2000: 158); to a single (small) spear
which accompanied the isolated burial
of a child and an unsexed adult together
(Grímsstaðir; Eldjárn 2000: 211); to a
possible boat burial accompanied by a
small axe, a knife, lead weight and two
pebbles (Straumur; Eldjárn 2000: 221-3).
Unlike in some ninth- to eleventh-cen-
tury Swedish graves, Icelandic children’s
graves do not appear to have been marked
out by any particular form of amulet (cf.
Fylgerfeldt 2005: 23-4 who identifies
amber amulets as being associated with
“shaman, children, pregnant women and
old women”).
For people dying at thirteen to
seventeen years of age our only examples
suggest that there was a heavy investment
in their graves. At Hemla in southern
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