Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2010, Page 18

ORRI VÉSTEINSSON
2. Section from Bessastaðir, drawn in 1988. Courtesy of Guðmundur Olafsson. National
Museum of Iceland.
(Gísli Gestsson et al. 1987). All these sites
have earlier levels which the original
investigators noted but did not excavate or
understand (see further on Stöng
Vilhjálmur Ö. Vilhjálmsson 1989 and on
Skallakot Hildur Gestsdóttir 2002). At
Snjáleifartóftir (Stenberger 1943a), ísleif-
sstaðir (Stenberger 1943c), Gjáskógar
(Kristján Eldjárn 1961) and Sveigakot
(Milek 2001, 2002, 2003, Guðrún Alda
Gísladóttir & Orri Vésteinsson 2004) one
or two earlier levels were excavated but at
these four sites the buildings had been
abandoned before anything that could be
called a farm-mound began to develop. It
should also be noted that there are sites in
Iceland where there really is only a single
phase, e.g. Þórarinsstaðir (Kristján Eldjám
1949), Hvítárholt (Þór Magnússon 1973),
Grelutóttir (Guðmundur Ólafsson 1980),
Granastaðir (Bjami Einarsson 1994),
Goðatættur (Kristján Eldjám 1989),
Vatnsíjörður (Ragnar Edvardsson &
McGovern 2005) and Hofstaðir (Lucas
2009). In some of these cases, like
Grelutóttir, Granastaðir, Hvítárholt,
Vatnsfjörður and Hofstaðir as well as
Reykjavík (Vésteinsson et al. 2006, 94-
95), there are suggestions of a horizontal
development of the sites with subsequent
building activity nearby, but in all these
cases the excavated buildings were aban-
doned and not built on again.
Deep stratigraphies have come into
clearer focus in Iceland in the past 40
years. Excavations in downtown
Reykjavík in the early 1970s revealed
depth of deposits in excess of 2 m with
many layers of domestic buildings
(Nordahl 1988). Excavations in Viðey
(Margrét Hallgrímsdóttir 1991a, b;
Steinunn Kristjánsdóttir 1994) and
Bessastaðir in the late 1980s and early
1990s also revealed deep stratigraphies,
especially at Bessastaðir where an enor-
mous farm-mound with the dimensions
85x68x4 m has formed over more than
1000 years (Guðmundur Ólafsson 1991a,
b - Fig. 2). It is however the complete
excavation of the smaller farm-mound at
Stóraborg on Iceland’s south coast in 1978
to 1990 which has thrown the clearest light
on Icelandic farm-mounds and their char-
acteristics. This farm-mound measured
70x25 m and was 2,5 m deep, containing
the remains of buildings frorn the 12th cen-
tury to the beginning of the 19th. More
than 50 house forms were excavated,
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