Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2009, Page 27

ICELANDIC VlKING AGE GRAVES: LaCK IN MATERIAL - LACK OF INTERPRETATION?
the following declaration; “The material
at hand is probably more or less known to
my audience. I do not pretend to offer
any striking novelties, nor do I think we
should expect any” (Eldjárn 1984, 3).
Furthermore, the emphasis on com-
parative analysis, especially with the
Norwegian material, has facilitated a
tendency to focus on what the Icelandic
material lacks instead of perceiving of it
on its own terms. Emphasis has been on
the scarcity and homogeneity of fmds,
the uniformity in raw material, the
absence of rich graves and the assumed
low technological level of the society. As
stated by Vésteinsson (2000, 169 [with
ref. to Eldjám]) “[t]he grave goods sup-
port the general impression of material
poverty among the first generations of
Icelanders...[and hence]...the Icelanders
were very much the poor cousins, com-
pared with Norway, when it came to
personal objects taken to the other world”.
Norway, in this sense, has been the estab-
lished “norm” against which the Icelandic
corpus has been measured and evaluated,
and hence the actual characteristics of the
material have not been acknowledged as
significant aspects of a distinct trait but
as deviations from something else.
The lack of consideration given the act
of burial as an important social and ritual
practice is also interesting. It is generally
regarded as common knowledge that
people’s belief in an afterlife urged for
the disposal of objects, or “necessities”,
in the graves with the deceased and any
further consideration of this practice and
its probable social meaning, or of the
objects buried, is rarely attempted.
Rather, one can observe a certain degra-
dation of burial practices, as if they were
acts of trivial importance. “Most mun-
dane objects, which on the other hand
could fít in the grave, were suitable as
grave goods,”1 Eldjám declares (2000,
301). However, there is in fact nothing in
the corpus that allows us to suggest that
the burial and deposition of things was an
incidental practice. And, hinting that the
paucity of grave goods in Icelandic
graves merely reflect economic aspects
and/or a conscious reluctance to forfeit
valuable objects does not hold either.
Actually, if this really was the case we
may as well not have had any grave
goods to puzzle over.
The material at hand
Considering the morphology of Icelandic
Viking Age graves there is truly not the
same variety among them as represented
in many other areas of the Viking world.
However, reorienting the focus away
from parallelism to the material itself
reveals that the material is not poor, sim-
ple or homogenous, but on the contrary.
There is a considerable variation within
the corpus, as well as there are clear
recurring traits which deserve a closer
look.
In general, grave goods are what most
evidently distinguish a pagan grave from a
Christian one, although this is not without
exceptions. Thus, a number of the Icelandic
graves identified as pre-Christian seem
not to have contained grave goods. This is
in many cases problematic, especially
with single graves where dating is difficult
and therefore hard to assert if they are
actually pre-Christian. In other instances
graves with no grave goods are found on
burial grounds among others with clear
pre-Christian characteristics. In most
cases, however, the dead were accompa-
nied by some items, often three to five
pieces, and/or an animal, a horse or dog.
1 Author’s translation.
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