Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2011, Page 32

TRBOJEVIÓ N., MOONEY D. E. AND BELL A. J.
the staple combustible fuel used for these
purposes is and has always been wood, and
such societies rely on the presence of large
areas of forest, or of managed woodland,
to supply their subsistence needs. This was
also the case with the Settlement society of
Iceland during the Viking Age: its needs
for fírewood were met through the
exploitation of woodlands, supplemented
perhaps by other resources.
Nowadays, one of the principal goals
of archaeology in Iceland, which together
with palaeoecology is the only research
tool appropriate for the settlement period,
is to determine the nature and scale of
exploitation of the original woodlands to
meet the need for firewood as one of the
main fuel types. The study of this
exploitation forms part of the discussion
of human-environment interactions during
the colonisation of the island.
In what follows, we present the results
of an experiment carried out at the
full-scale replicated Viking Age hall at
Eiríksstaðir, in the Haukadalur valley in
the Dalabyggð district of westem Iceland.
This experiment was made to identify the
possible degree of the use of birch wood
as the sole fuel type for basic household
needs during the summer seasons, and
contribute to the wider debate about the
decline of woodlands and environmental
change on the island which took place in
the late 9th and early 10th centuries.
Landnám deforestation:
Examining the anthropogenic
impact
There is a very well-known joke about the
woodlands in modem Iceland: if you get
lost in an Icelandic forest, just stand up.
Around the country, one observes very
little woodland; for the most part, it is
birch-dominated shmbland and at best a
low-growing forest of crooked trees.
However, both palynological evidence and
historical sources suggest that this was not
always the case. While currently around
20% of the country is covered by
vegetation, about 1% of this being birch
woodland, estimates of the forest cover at
the time oíLandnám (AD 870 - 930) range
between 18% (Friðriksson 1987) and 40%
(Bjamasson 1971). íslendingabók (The
Book of Icelanders), an account of the
settlement and early history of Iceland,
compiled in the 12th century, states in a
much-quoted passage that when the
settlers first arrived in Iceland, the land
was covered in forest “ffom the mountains
to the seashores” (Benediktsson (ed.)
1968, p. 5). Although this is likely to be at
least a slight exaggeration, much of the
bioarchaeological and palaeoecological
research done in recent years has been
focused on proving or disproving this
statement, and on how Iceland arrived at
its present state of relative treelessness.
Pollen studies from around the country
have shown that birch (Betula
nana/pubescens) pollen decreased after
the Landnám. Some have shown a very
dramatic decline (e.g. Hallsdóttir 1987)
while others suggest a more prolonged
downtum (e.g. Lawson et al 2007). There
are, of course, numerous factors affecting
these results, such as the proximity of the
pollen core to a Landnám farm, the
catchment area of the mire or lake from
which the core is taken, and the original
vegetation of the landscape as well as
regional differences of woodland
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