Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2009, Page 58

Elizabeth Pierce
Figure 1 - Atlantic walrns
(Odobenus rosmarus ros-
marus) provided early
Icelanders not only with
valuable ivory, but also hide
for ropes and dense bacu-
lum and skull bones for
objects such as knife han-
dles. Photo courtesy of
Colleen Batey.
890, he told the king that the voyage
from his home in northem Norway,
around the North Cape of Norway into
what may have been the White Sea, was
fuelled partly by curiosity but also ‘for
the walruses, for they have very fíne
ivory in their tusks ... and their hide is
very good for ship-ropes’ (Lund 1984:
19-20). Ohthere also gave Alfred walms
ivory as a gift, though it is not clear
whether the ivory was harvested on his
voyage northward (Lund 1984: 20;
Roesdahl 1998: 18; 2003: 146; 2007:
92).
During the Middle Ages the mysteri-
ous walms, which was thought by some
to be a físh, captured the minds of
Europeans although they had only a
vague idea of its appearance (Larson
1917: 140-141; Roesdahl 1998: 14;
Pluskowski 2004: 291). Duringthe Norse
Period, the animals were hunted in
Greenland, northem Norway, Russia and
in the Barents Sea (Reijinders et al. 1993:
27; Smimova 2001: 9-11), but there is a
saga account of men attempting and fail-
ing to kill a walrus in Iceland, too (see
Kristjánsson 1986: 93-97 for a list of
walrus hunts).
Walrus in Iceland
Some researchers say that until Greenland
was settled, the only source of walms
ivory was from northem Norway (e.g.
Sawyer 1984: 44), but that is not true.
Walrus are not usually found in Iceland,
but they have come to the country spo-
radically over the past few thousand
years (Petersen 1993: 214-215), probably
from eastem Greenland. The animals
migrate with the movement of pack ice
(Reijinders et al. 1993: 27), so their pres-
ence in Iceland would depend greatly on
prevailing conditions. At the time of set-
tlement, Iceland’s climate would have
been similar to today’s, but the country
was just emerging from a cold spell when
the fírst settlers arrived (Einarsson 2006:
88), perhaps creating the appropriate
conditions.
Work by the Icelandic Institute of
Natural History on walms sightings and
skeletal remains has found that the ani-
mals have appeared all around the coast
of Iceland, with sightings especially con-
centrated on the northem and northeast-
em coasts (Petersen 1993: 214; for a full
list of sightings see Kristjánsson 1986:
108-110). However, bones and tusks
56