Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2011, Page 52

ADOLF FRIÐRIKSSON AND ORRI VÉSTEINSSON
LANDSCAPES OF BURIAL:
CONTRASTING THE PAGAN AND CHRISTIAN
PARADIGMS OF BURIAL IN VIKING AGE AND
MEDIEVAL ICELAND
Presenting a long-tenn view of the numerical development of cemeteries in
Viking age and medieval Iceland this paper argues that although there are distinct
differences between the pagan and Christian burial paradigms those differences
mask more fundamental processes reflecting the gradual consolidation of
community as the primary reference for personal identity. Whereas in the 1 Oth
century every farm had its own cemetery, this number was reduced by half
following the conversion to Christianity with the poorest farms most likely to lose
their cemetery. Compared to other parts of Christian Europe that still left a very
high proportion of fanns with their own cemeteries but in the following centuries
the majority seems to have fallen out of use resulting, by the 16th century at the
latest, in a system where most people were buried in a parish cemetery. The
changes in burial practice in the Christian period remain poorly understood and
require further research.
While the conversion to Christianity around 1000 involved a very real change
in attitudes to the dead, where their exclusion and marginalisation was replaced
by inclusion and appropriation, a very fundamental ideological shift, the
permutations of this change as reflected in burial locations is, we argue, more
revealing about the social structure at the time. This paper is a product of the
project Death and burial in lceland for 1150 years which aims to throw further
light on these issues.
Adolf Friðriksson, Fornleifastofnun Islands, Bámgötu 3, 101, Reykjavík, Iceland
Email: adolf@instarch.is
Orri Vésteinsson, Department of Archaeology, University of Iceland,
Reykjavík, Iceland.
Email: orri@hi.is
Keywords: Viking Age, Middle ages, Burial, Conversion, Landscape
Introduction
Since the Upper Palaeolithic humans have
disposed of their dead in ways that are
meaningful, reflecting ideas and beliefs in
a systematic way amenable, in the case of
burials and funerary monuments, to study
and interpretation. As a rule it is the
burials themselves, the skeletal remains,
grave goods and other ítimishings as well
as mounds or other monuments built on
top, which have been the focus of
attention and this is what most would
identify as the essence of burial or
funerary archaeology. It has however long
been recognized that the locations of
burials are also the result of choices which
are meaningful in a variety of ways and
that these can be studied just as ffuitfully
ARCHAEOLOGIA ISLANDICA 9 (2011) 50-64