Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2007, Page 73

Ancient ironmaking in Iceland, Greenland and Newfoundland
metal were collected at the abandoned
farm Sandartunga in Þjórsárdalur, again
indicating very professional ironmak-
ing. Margrét Hermanns-Auðardóttir took
samples of charcoal from the slag heaps.
I4C-dates based upon birch indicate that
the production in Fnjóskadalur took place
around year 1100-1200. As the estimated
total production amounts to about 500
tons, an annual average seems to be some
2 tons when the time span is considered
to be 250 years or 5 tons if the period
of ironmaking lasted 100 years. As the
sites studied lie close to farms, one must
expect that ironmaking was integrated
into the typical seasonal activities at a
farm. It is remarkable that Fnjóskadalur is
heavily wooded, in spite of a sizeable iron
production. This tells that the value of a
forest, which renewed itself and could
provide charcoal for iron production, was
higher than that of grass land.
The present author supports the
view of Dr. Buchwald that no ironmaking
took place in Greenland, due to lack of
raw materials while many attempts were
made at L’Anse aux Meadows, where bog
iron ore can be found and slag, roasted
ore, a smithy and pieces of iron express
human activity. However, it has not been
proven that the attempts were successful.
In particular the amount of slag found is
much smaller than that which character-
izes bloomery ironmaking. Most likely
the cargo of the ships sailing from Green-
land to Newfoundland also included
blooms produced in Norway or Iceland.
From such blooms objects such as riv-
ets, nails, probably also fishing hooks
and arrowheads were made by smith-
ing. Molybdenum as a trace elements
in two samples of iron found at L’Anse
aux Meadows and also in a characteristic
bloom of the period found in the county
Vest-Agder indicates that the provenance
was some bloomery site in the inner parts
of the counties Telemark, Aust- or Vest-
Agder. The situation of the ironmakers at
L’Anse aux Meadows therefore reminds
us of that of modern experimenters. This
author claims that nobody has been able
to re-enact the successful ironmaking of
the Middle ages when the two criteria
output and quality are taken seriously into
consideration.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the National Museum
of Iceland for providing a car for a round
trip in the year 1996, well guided by Kristín
Huld Sigurðardóttir, Margrét Hermanns-
Auðardóttir, and Þorbjöm Friðriksson. The
Norwegian Research Council financed
two of my three trips to Iceland. The hos-
pitality of and the discussions with my
ffiends Kristín Steinsdóttir, Jón Hálfdánar-
son as well as our hosts in Fnjoskadalur
Alfhildur Jónsdóttir and Ámi Ólason are
highly appreciated. I would in particular
thank Margrét Hermanns-Auðardóttir for
providing values for 14C dating of samples
of charcoal ffom slag heaps. Parks Canada
invited me for a week’s visit to L’Anse aux
Meadows. The stay and the meeting with
Birgitta Wallace and the staff gave me
good, lasting and inspiring impressions.
Irmelin Martens provided a sample ffom
a bloom recovered from a site at Lista in
Norway. Rolf Hansen at ERAMET Nor-
way has been so kind to analyze the sam-
ples of ore and slag.
I would like to stress that no vio-
lation of the law protecting ancient sites has
taken place. No digging was undertaken,
and an application to take minor samples
of waste products to Norway for analysis
was sent ffom the Museum in Reykjavík
to the Icelandic authorities. No objection
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