Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2011, Page 54

ADOLF FRIÐRIKSSON AND ORRI VÉSTEINSSON
categories. Critical examination of the
evidence therefore needs to take account
of the research history, the context in
which the data have been accumulated
and interpreted so far. Only by building on
existing knowledge can we hope to
proceed from the dichotomous view of the
present to a more comprehensive view
that sees religion as a reflection of burial
rather than the other way around. In this
paper we will examine the two categories,
evidence of pagan and Christian burial
locations, in order to propose a hypothesis
about the development of cemetery
distribution from the Viking age to the late
middle ages. We will begin by
demonstrating the contrast between the
pagan and Christian paradigms of burial
location as they can be reconstructed from
the available evidence and follow this
with a discussion of how this difference
came about and what it means.
The pagan paradigm of burial
location
Recent research has shown that pagan
burials can be grouped in two in terms of
their relationship with settlements
(Friðriksson 2004a; 2004b). On the one
hand pagan burials are frequently found
just outside homefíelds and on the other
they can be situated íurther away, often
close to or on boundaries between farms.
What these locational types have in
common is that they are liminal and they
are also frequently, possibly always,
associated with routes. The significance of
these associations has been called in to
question by the lack of apparent
monumentality of the burials - it has not
been evident that they would have been
visible to passers-by at all - but recent
open area excavations of pagan
cemeteries at Litlu-Núpar (Roberts 2008,
Pálsdóttir & Leifsson 2010) and
Ingiríðarstaðir (Hreiðarsdóttir & Roberts
2009) in NE-Iceland have revealed that
many burials had superstructures of
timber that would have ensured their
visibility, potentially for decades after
their erection. Another intriguing aspect
of pagan burial location that has become
evident through recent research is that the
cemeteries are frequently (although not
always) out of sight from the settlement to
which they belonged. As we shall see this
makes the contrast to the Christian
paradigm of burial location even sharper.
It is possible that there is a
chronological signifícance to the two
types of locations and it has been
suggested that the burials closer to
settlements represent an earlier stage
while those on or close to boundaries are
later (Friðriksson 2004a, 2004b). It is
certainly possible that there was more than
one burial location associated with each
settlement, as suggestedby multiple burial
locations associated with the farms of
Álfsstaðir (Eldjám 2000, 79-81), Stóri
Klofi (Eldjám 2000, 63-64) and Fellsmúli
(Eldjám 2000, 65) all in S-Iceland as well
as Hrollaugsstaðir in E-Iceland (Eldjám
2000, 226-27). In some of these cases (in
particular Fellsmúli and possibly
Álfsstaðir) it is possible that one of the
locations is in fact a Christian cemetery.
The question then arises whether such
multiple locations are in fact real (they
might actually relate to other settlements
since disappeared), or whether they reflect
relocations of the settlements or
recalibrations of their relationships with
other settlements (the relocation of routes
and boundaries), chronological
developments or some other distinctions,
perhaps of class or family. These are
issues we hope to throw light on in our
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