Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2009, Síða 11

Adolf Friðriksson
SOCIAL AND SYMBOLIC LANDSCAPES
IN LATE IRON AGE ICELAND
The past decade has witnessed important advances in research involved with
burial archaeology of Late Iron Age Iceland (c. 800-1100 AD). Archives have
been revised and published, and a total survey of all known sites has generated
location models which have been successfully applied to uncover new sites.
Modem excavation methods under controlled conditions are offering greater
detail and consequently new insights into burial practices in Iceland. This devel-
opment has helped to go beyond typological analysis of grave goods to study all
aspects of the burial tradition and the social groups represented in the data. One
of the poorly understood variables is the layout and organisation of grave fields in
Iceland. This paper describes the main characteristics of grave fields from frag-
mentary earlier evidence and more recent findings. The most important conclu-
sion is that, on the basis of the plan and arrangement of interments, different types
of burial sites in Iceland can be distinguished. A larger, unsolved puzzle remains:
what is the meaning of this variance? How can we explain the difference in the
stmcture and organisation of grave fields in Iceland?
Adolf Friðriksson, Fornleifastofnun Islands, Bárugata 3, 101 Reykjavík,
Iceland
Keywords: Late Iron Age, Burials, Grave fields, Spatial organization
Introduction
In recent years there has been an upsurge
of interest into burial archaeology in
Iceland. The fundamental work on
Icelandic Iron Age material culture, Kuml
og haugfé í heiðnum sið á Islandi (“Burial
and grave goods in pagan Iceland”) by
Kristján Eldjám (1956), was revised and
re-published posthumously (Eldjárn and
Friðriksson 2000), containing a complete
corpus of known burial sites and an
analysis of all grave goods and relevant
artefacts and stray-finds. Over the past
decade, all human bone remains from
this period have been re-examined and
are currently the subject of further palae-
opathological study (Hildur Gestsdóttir
1998; 2004). Specifíc groups of artefacts
are also being re-analysed in greater
depth for new projects and problem-ori-
entated research is emerging (Smith
2001, 2003, 2004; Elín Hreiðarsdóttir
1998, 2005; Þóra Pétursdóttir 2007).
Over 90% of known grave fields from the
Iron Age have now been systematically
re-visited by the present author, their
topographic setting and necrography
recorded, inspiring fresh enquiries into
their geographical context (Adolf
Friðriksson 2004a, b). New models pre-
dicting the location of burials have been
put forward, tested, modified, and tested
further, and have now led to new burial
fínds which have been subsequently
excavated (Adolf Friðriksson 2006; et al.
2005a, b, c).
Archaeologia Islandica 7 (2009) 9-21