Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2011, Page 48

ORRI VÉSTEINSSON
there are only two burial sites in the whole
of Gullbringu- og Kjósarsýsla, suggesting
it belongs to the same zone of very low
burial ffeqency as the westem quarter, but
even if Amessýsla is considered in
isolation (based on 1690s fígures,
weighing for the difference) it comes out at
only 3,75%, on a par with Húnavatnssýsla
and Skagaíjörður, and perhaps not so
different from Rangárvallasýsla. In
Skaftafellssýsla large swaths of land have
been lost in glacial floods no doubt
skewing the figure which would otherwise
be higher, presumably higher than in the
West but lower than in the Northeast.
Less dramatic but potentially no less
influential geo-morphological process
like subsidence and coastal erosion may
also affect the distribution in particular
regions but this issue remains understudied
(see Kristiansen ed. 1985 for possible
approaches).
Keeping these qualifications in mind it
is possible to suggest that Iceland can be
divided into three zones of burial
frequency (fig.5). The zone of highest
density is in the Northeast, from
Eyjaljörður to Fljótsdalshérað, a zone of
lowest density is in the West, from
Reykjanes to Hrútafjörður, and an
intermediate zone in the regions
inbetween, in Húnavatnssýsla,
Skagafjörður and the southem plains frorn
Reykjanes to Homaijörður. The eastem
ijords may belong to this zone or the one
of lowest frequency - the total number of
farms is too low to say with confidence.
Although finds of new burials in the
last 10 years largely confirm these
pattems, with most found in the Northeast,
they also clearly reflect research activity,
which has focused very much on the
Northeast and the Northwest, with two
new burial sites in the Northwest
representing a nearly 30% increase in that
region. Systematic investigation (already
underway, led by Adolf Friðriksson) will
tell to what extent these pattems actually
are real or whether they are predominantly
the effect of the accidents of discovery. In
the safe knowledge that this issue will be
cleared up in the not-so-distant future it is
permissable to present a few speculative
explanations which may give some food
for thought in the meantime.
One possible explanation for the
difference in burial frequency is that it
reflects actual population levels. That there
simply were many more people in the
Northeast than in the West in the Viking
age. It is certainly possible to argue that the
difference between the Northeast and the
mid-North and South is due to this factor.
Intensive survey work in the Northeast has
in recent years documented a high number
of farms abandoned gradually ffom the
10th to the 14th centuries (Lárasdóttir
2007, Lárasdóttir & Hreiðarsdóttir 2011,
Ólafsson ed. 2008, Vésteinsson ed. 2011).
In the investigated regions there was a
more than 50% reduction in the number of
settlements in this period, and although it
does not follow that the population
reduced at the same rate it is certainly
possible that it reduced by enough to
account for the difference between the
ratios in the Northeast and the mid-North
and South. It is much harder to make this
case for the West, which would have had
to be virtually uninhabited in the Viking
age for this explanation to work. That is
not a likely proposition although a case
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