Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2007, Page 77

A REASSESSMENT OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CATHEDRAL AT GARÐAR, GREENLAND
The establishment of
the Greenlandic bishop’s seat
Greenland was settled from Iceland
towards the end of the 10th century, prob-
ably in or around AD 985, and Christian-
ity seems to have been an early feature in
Norse Greenland. Certainly the early date
of some of the Norse churches indicates
that at least some of the settlers were
already Christians at the time of the land-
nam (Arneborg 2000, 311). The final
Christianization is claimed by written
sources to have taken place at around AD
1000 (Arneborg 2000, 310). The status of
Greenland as a Christian country was
consolidated when a Greenlandic bishop-
ric was established in the first third of the
1 lth century. The written sources disagree
as to exactly when the bishopric was
established, but the most quoted source
on the topic, Grænlendinga Þáttr (Hall-
dórsson 1978, 103-116) can be shown to
place the event in the 1120’s.1 According
to the same source, the bishop’s seat was
established at a farm in the Eastern Set-
tlement called Garðar. A major excavation
at the settlement Igaliku at the head of
Igaliku-fjord (fig. 1), which took place in
1926, has proved beyond reasonable
doubt that this was the site of the bishop’s
seat. In the north chapel of the church
ruin at the site, the excavators found a
bishop’s grave. The grave was identified
as such by the presence of a crozier of
walrus ivory as well as a finger ring,
interpreted as a bishop’s ring (Norlund
1930, 66).
The site
The present day settlement of Igaliku,
where Garðar was located, lies at the head
of Igaliku-fjord in the modem municipal-
ity of Narsaq. As mentioned above, Iga-
liku-íjord is identical with the Norse Ein-
arsfjörð which lay in the central and most
densely populated part of the Eastern Set-
tlement. Placing a Norse farm here was
natural for a number of reasons. There is
a large grass-covered plain which rises
gently to the west before the more steep
rise towards the mountains. Freshwater is
found naturally at the site: a small stream
comes down from the mountains and there
is a natural spring which the Norse used
as a well. Grass for grazing and turf cut-
ting is abundant, and there are large areas
of low lying lands around Igaliku which
also provided ideal grazing opportunities.
Igaliku is situated favorably at the head of
the fjord where several small inlets make
good natural harbors, although the situa-
tion might have been different in Norse
times. The water level has risen during and
since Norse times and changes in coastal
topography must have taken place.
From Igaliku there is easy over-
land access to the eastem shore of Tunul-
liarfik-fjord, the Norse Eiriksfjörð, via a
low isthmus to the northwest. The distance,
circa 2,5 kilometers, can be traversed on
foot in less than an hour. Thus Garðar was
also ideally situated regarding communi-
cation with Eiriksfjörð which would have
been the political center of the Eastem
Settlement in the time immediately fol-
lowing the landnám, if we are to believe
Grœnlendinga saga (Halldórsson 1978,
81-101). Garðar is by far the best situated
Norse Farm in Einarsfjörð, both in terms of
resources and communication, and as such
there is much to indicate that the farm was
the original landnáma-farm of the fjord.
1 By correlating the events as chronicled in Grœnlendinga Þáttr with statements in the Icelandic annals (Gronlands Historiske
Mindesmœrker III, 7).
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