Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2009, Page 20

Adolf Friðriksson
Figure 9. Cemetery at Lyngbrekka (Daða-
staðaleiti), NE-Iceland. (Drawing by H.M.
Roberts).
known burial sites are severely damaged,
or not fully uncovered, or perhaps both.
On the other hand there are plenty of new
fíndings which will hopefully encourage
further research.
The available information suggests
that pagan burial sites in Iceland com-
prise a) a single burial, b) a small group
(2-5) of graves or c) a “large” group (c.
10). Whether the single burials were also
unique in any social or cultural sense in
the past remains to be studied. However,
the great majority of sites are those of
small groups of graves. Whether the
groups were big or small, the graves were
carefully arranged in a harmonious way.
The basic form is a straight line of
graves, end-to-end, with c. 5 m intervals.
We do not know why this form was cho-
sen. The reasons may have been more
than one. Since most burials are located
by and are running parallel to old tracks
and routes, one might postulate that the
Figure 10. Cluster cemetery at Ingiríðarstaðir,
NE-Iceland (Drawing by H.M. Roberts).
basic linear form of a grave fíeld is not a
preferred, particular design with a sophis-
ticated meaning, but that the graves were
simply put alongside a more-or-less
straight road. Thus, the importance rather
being the relationship between death and
voyage in the after-life. On the other
hand, it is not certain that all linear grave
fields were placed beside routes, or, for
that matter, that the adjacent road pre-
dates the funerary site.
Some of the grave fields are better
described as clusters rather than linear,
although within a cluster, the graves are
arranged systematically into several par-
allel lines. Clusters are found in similar
locations as linear grave fields and the
formation does not seem to be deter-
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