Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2011, Page 57

LANDSCAPES OF BURIAL: CONTRASTING THE PAGAN AND CHRISTIAN
PARADIGMS OF BURIAL IN VIKING AGE AND MEDIEVAL ICELAND
almost without exception on the farm
mound, at one end of the farm-houses or
directly in front of them. An ongoing
survey of the location of churches and
chapels has revealed that there was
slightly greater variation in the location of
chapels and annex churches in medieval
times. Out of 338 sites which have been
identified and classified 220 churches or
chapels were situated on the farm mound,
102 elsewhere within the home-field and
only 16 outside it - some of these are
roadside chapels which may not have
been associated with burials. Some of the
chapels and churches inside home-fields
but not on the farm mounds were still
fairly close to the farmhouses, in the order
of 10-30 m, but in other cases they were
further away, in a few cases more than 100
m. There are only 14 cases where the
chapel or church was adjacent to, although
always inside, the home-field boundary.
There are therefore distinct differences
in the character of Christian and pagan
burial location. While pagan cemeteries
are as a rule outside the homefield
(although there are 3 possible exceptions
to this), out of sight and on a border of
some sort, Christian cemeteries are as a
mle inside the homefield, and usually
strongly linked with the farm-houses, well
within sight of residents as well as visitors
approaching the farm. Another major
difference is revealed when the
distribution of Christian cemeteries is
compared to value categories.
In the case of Christian cemeteries the
problem is rarely the association between
cemetery or farm but rather that the
existence of cemeteries must be assumed
ffom evidence for chapels and churches.
There are good grounds to do this: graves
are as a mle found in association with
church or chapel stmctures when
excavated and no convincing case has
been recorded of an ordinary church or
chapel with no associated cemetery. The
two exceptions are churches outside the
parochial system: the merchants’ church
at Gásir (Vésteinsson 2009) and the
roadside chapel in Kapelluhraun (Eldjám
1957) where no graves were found. In
addition human bones have frequently
come to light at sites where churches or
chapels are known to have existed (e.g.
Eldjám 1974, 142); in the ongoing survey
mentioned above evidence for burial has
been recorded at more than 150 chapel
and church sites. It is therefore justifiable
to expect that wherever evidence of a
chapel or a church can be found this also
indicates the existence of a cemetery. As
we shall see below there is strong
evidence to suggest that in many, perhaps
the majority of cases, burial ceased at
chapels and lesser churches in the course
of the high and later middle ages, but as
evidence stands presently it seems safe to
assume that all such stractures were
associated with burial in the 11 th century.
The next problem to solve is that
although a healthy number of early
churches and chapels have been
excavated, that number obviously does
not represent anything like the total
number or distribution of these buildings
in the earliest period of Christianity. No
lists are available of chapels or churches
in the llth century and while written
evidence exists for a few scores of
churches in the llth and 12th centuries
(Vésteinsson 2000a, 37-45) it is only in
the 14th century that the source material
allows comprehensive assessment of the
number and distribution of these
stmctures. Archaeological evidence
suggests that the late medieval churches
and chapels invariably trace their origins
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