Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2010, Page 31

ON FARM MOUNDS
embedded in the floors.
While exaggerated build-up of floors
has been observed in many farm-mounds
and can be seen as the root cause for their
formation, it does not represent an ade-
quate explanation for why floors were, in
some cases - and in some cases not -
allowed to rise so much. Preventing the
rise of floor levels by digging them out is
not just easy, it was clearly a common
procedure. Evidence for the removal of
floors can be seen clearly in the sections
from the passage at Laufás, but such evi-
dence was not noted at Stóraborg where
the much thicker floors should have been
more problematic. Post-holes, pin- and
peg-holes and other negative features
capped by later floor-layer in early halls
like at Hofstaðir and Sveigakot also sug-
gest that the floor layers associated with
these holes must have been dug out, the
denser and more chaotic the holes the
more often this must have been repeated
(Fig. 11). In these halls it seems clear that
the preserved floor layers represent only
the final phase of occupation, possibly
only a year or two, while earlier floor lay-
ers have been removed.
This suggests that removing floor lay-
ers from Viking age halls was a regular
practice, and as long as it was it would
have prevented the build-up of farm-
mounds. It is easy to see why this would
have been done; not only would it have
helped preserve the wooden infrastruc-
ture of the buildings it would also have
been a hygienic measure in that it
removed materials prone to rotting and
11- Holes revealed under the floor layer of a late lOth century hall in Sveigakot, N-Iceland.
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