Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2009, Qupperneq 31

ICELANDIC VlKING AgE GRAVES: LaCK IN MATERIAL - LACK OF INTERPRETATION?
As with other parts of the grave the
horse does not seem to be “dumped” in
the grave, but carefully placed in it in a
certain “traditional” way. Together the
careful arrangement of all the constitu-
ents in the grave collective does not only
demonstrate the close and entangled rela-
tions between the items and the deceased
but also the significance this display may
have had for those constructing the grave.
This alone seems to underline that the act
of burial was not trivial nor the deposi-
tion of things and animals an incidental
practice.
Between people and things
Rather than reflecting actual attributes of
the corpus, the declared “poomess” of
the Icelandic graves is grounded in the
tenacious skepticism in archaeology’s
potential as set against the historical
record and, more generally, in a sceptical
attitude towards the interpretive potential
of material culture. It is a curious fact -
and somewhat of an irony - that the very
same written sources that have been used
to legitimize this textual hegemony, con-
stantly inform us about the signifícant
role material culture played in the early
Icelandic society. Where social relations,
associations and institutions were formed,
manifested and stabilized by embedding
and merging them in the materiality of
things. The verses of Hávamál as well as
the Sagas, for example, suggest that gift
exchange was an integral component of
the social structure, where the passing of
a gift did not mark the end of interaction
but the creation of a relationship between
those involved.
The transfer of objects is apparent in
many contexts but also seems strongly
connected to the rituals surrounding the
transitional moments (“life-crisis”) in a
person’s life - what Arnold van Gennep
(1960 [1909]) called “the rites of pas-
sage”. These are sacred arenas, in rela-
tion to for example birth, marriage or
death, where a person’s identity and rela-
tions to other persons are transformed.
Some rites of passage, like mortuary
rites, will also assemble the community
in concem and reinforce or alter relations
within it. This was probably the case in
Viking Age Iceland where many graves
can be related to specific farms and,
according to written sources, the burial
was usually handled by the deceased’s
close relatives. The tradition was to hold
a feast (erfi) in honour of the deceased to
which a great number of people could be
invited, and whom on departure, were
sometimes granted with gifts.
Upon a persons death, the social rela-
tions and institutions to which that per-
son was a part, were left unbalanced. It
was therefore important that the survi-
vors gathered around the deceased’s body
to reconsider, reconstruct and reinforce
these relations, for example through the
formal act of transferring objects. Thus,
the burial was not necessarily a sacred
gathering as we would define it today.
Decisions had to be made conceming the
fate of the powerful or valuable things in
the deceased’s possession. Who were to
take his/her place in these relations by
being bestowed this sword or brooch? Or,
altematively, which objects/animals were
to follow the deceased to the other side?
That the erfi could last many days or
even weeks is understandable as there
was hardly consensus on how to act. That
was for example the case at Gunnar’s
burial in Njáls saga where his mother
Rannveig and his son Högni disagreed on
whether Gunnar’s halberd was to accom-
pany him in the grave or not. Rannveig
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