Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2009, Page 15

SOCIAL AND SYMBOLIC LANDSCAPES IN LATE IRON AgE ICELAND
No. of graves No. of sites
1 97
2 38
3 11
4 9
5 2
6 1
l7 2
8 1
9 1
10 1
13 1
Table 1 shows the number of graves per btiri-
al field of all known burial sites in Iceland.
These statistics appear to fít well to the
classic and popular ideas surrounding
mounds and human bone fmds: that these
are single burials of “the Settler” himself
or that of an important character known
from the Icelandic Sagas (Friðriksson
1994: 74-92). However, these figures are
incomplete and misleading, and tell us
more about the fate of burial sites and
their recording history, rather than of
actual number of graves. The great majo-
rity of sites with 1 or 2 graves have only
poor records, either because they were
uncovered before systematic recording of
burial fínds had begun in Iceland, or
because the site has never been examined
further. Many have been completely
destroyed by cultivation activities or
natural erosion. The apparently straight-
forward task to merely discem the size of
cemeteries calls for some selection of the
information at hand.
If we include only the best recorded
findings, the picture changes dramatical-
ly at the cost of the single burial sites.
Only c. 50% of the sites have been par-
tially investigated, and in most cases the
method comprised a quick and non-sys-
tematic trial trenching into the sods sur-
rounding the original chance find of
bones or burial. Total excavation or other
thorough examination of burial fmds and
their surroundings has only recently
begun in Iceland. By throwing a glance at
the incoming results of current fieldwork,
one gets a step closer towards a definition
of the ordinary cemetery size. In this
century, only 6 sites have been excavat-
ed4. Although none of these new excava-
tions have been completed, four of these
sites have 4 graves or more while the oth-
ers have two. Trial excavations at two
more sites, indicate a priori a minimum
4 They are Saltvík, Daðastaðir, Keldudalur, L-Núpar,
Kálfskinn in N-Iceland, and Hringsdalur in
NW-Iceland.
Figure 2. Dalvík, N-Iceland, is the largest
burial field known in Iceland (from Bruun
1928).'
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