Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2011, Page 31

TRBOJEVIC N., MOONEY D. E. AND BELL A. J.
A FIREWOOD EXPERIMENT AT EIRÍKSSTAÐIR:
A STEP TOWARDS QUANTIFYING THE USE OF
FIREWOOD FOR DAILY HOUSEHOLD NEEDS IN
VIKING AGE ICELAND
Although birch wood is the only woodland-forming native tree in Iceland, little is
known about its importance as a source of fuel for interior heating and cooking in
Viking Age Iceland. Studies of fuel residues suggest that birch wood was the
prevalent fuel in some sites, but not in others, and íurther research has been
hampered by the lack of understanding about how much birch wood would have
been needed to satisfy the fuel needs of ordinary households.
Well-founded estimates about the quantity of birch wood needed are a
precondition for determining to what extent such requirements contributed to the
woodland decline which accompanied the colonisation of Iceland. Furthermore,
these estimates would also allow us to determine if the drastically reduced
woodlands of post-Settlement period Iceland could have sustained the basic fuel
needs of ordinary households.
This paper presents the results of an ethno-archaeological experiment
conducted in a full-scale replica of a Viking Age house which indicate that during
the summer season no more than 54.72 kg of birch firewood would be required to
fulfil the daily household needs of interior heating and cooking. By combining the
results of this experiment with the results of experiments conducted at other times
of the year and adjusting for variations in longhouse sizes at other Viking Age
sites, it will be possible to estimate the total extent of woodlands that would have
been cleared to provide suffícient firewood on a yearly basis, and hence over the
period of the first 60 years of human habitation. Finally, these results will allow
us to determine if the introduction of other sources of fuel in post-Settlement
Iceland was an unavoidable necessity due to drastically reduced woodland
coverage.
Trbojevic N. and Bell A. J. University of Iceland, Department of Archaeology,
School of Humanities, Sœmundargötu 2, 101 Reykjavík, Iceland
Mooney D. E. University of Aberdeen, Department of Archaeology, School of
Geosciences, St Mary ’s Building, Elphinstone Road, Aberdeen, AB24 3 UF, UK
Keywords: Viking Age, Iceland, Deforestation, Full-scale replica, Firewood,
Experiment, Eiríksstaðir
Introduction
Access to fuel resources is vital to the
viability of any human community. We
use combustible fuel for heat, light,
cooking and industry, and so wherever
humans settle one of our main impacts on
the environment will be the depletion (to
some extent) of the natural fuel resources
found there. This is a key interaction that
underlies every colonisation of an area by
humankind, from prehistory to modem
times. In many societies across the world,
ARCHAEOLOGIA ISLANDICA 9 (2011) 29-40