Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2011, Page 49

A NOTE ON THE REGIONAL DISTRIBUTION OF PAGAN BURIALS IN ICELAND
I---) low frequency
Figure 5. Proposed zones of burial frequency in Iceland
could be made that Vestfirðir at least were
much less densely inhabited then than
later.
Other explanations must therefore be
sought for the difference between the West
and the rest of the country. One could be
that the difference lies in a different ratio
of cemeteries to settlements, that there
were fewer (and therefore larger)
cemeteries in the West. At a stretch the
Berufjörður and Hafurbjamarstaðir
cemeteries could be made to fit this kind of
scenario but the rest of the sites in the West
are too incompletely preserved, reported
and/or understood to support such a
hypothesis. To follow this train of thought
a bit further however it is conceivable that
if cemeteries in the West as a mle served
multiple settlements (as opposed to single
settlements which was the norm in other
regions - see Friðriksson and Vésteinsson
this volume) then the change in burial
custom following the conversion to
Christianity might not have entailed the
relocation of burial grounds; the pagan
cemeteries might be capped by their
Christian successors. There is only the
thinnest shred of evidence supporting this
notion: the description of an apparently
pagan burial in the churchyard at
Laugardalur in Tálknafjörður in 1603
(Annálar V, 505-506), but the otherwise
complete absence of such indications
makes this hypothesis difficult to sustain.
An aspect of the pagan burial evidence not
considered here but which might be
relevant in this context is the number of
graves in each cemetery. It would support
the notion of fewer cemeteries per
settlement if the westem cemeteries were
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