Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2011, Page 99

FARMSTEAD RELOCATION AT THE END OF THE VIKING AGE.
RESULTS OF THE SKAGAFJÖRÐUR ARCHAEOLOGICAL SETTLEMENT SURVEY
interpretation of the early status of these
farmsteads finds some support in the fact
that when they later appear in the historical
record many of the small, late farmsteads
are owned by their larger and earlier
neighbors (Bolender 2006).
Farmstead relocation required a
significant investment of labor to build
new infrastructure. Smaller farming
households may have lacked the labor
reserves, or the ability to draw on social
networks for additional labor, to relocate
an entire farmstead. The development of
homefíelds may have restricted farmstead
relocation also. Intensified homefields
represent a large accumulation of
landesque capital (cf. Blaikie and
Brookfield 1987). These field systems
became most productive starting in the
llth century (Adderley, et al. 2008;
Bolender 2006). Productive homefields
were an essential part of farm production
and proximity to the farmstead core was
important in terms of the economics of the
farm. Relocating the farmstead away fforn
the homefields made little sense and the
resources necessary for re-establishing
homefields may have been as much or
more of a hurdle for small farms as
reconstructing the farmstead buildings.
Also tenant farmers had limited rights over
their farms. Historically, new buildings or
major repairs on a tenant fann required the
permission of the landowner, which may
have been difficult to obtain (Dennis, et al.
1980:341).
If land status really was a factor
limiting the later relocation of farmsteads,
the question of why so few early, and
presumably independent, farms relocated
remains. The SASS project was designed
conceptually and methodologically based
on the assumption that first farms, coming
into a largely unknown and rapidly
changing environment, would have been
fully abandoned or relocated with a high
degree of frequency as the new
Icelanders altered the social and
environmental landscapes. Instead, a
relatively high degree of spatial and
social stability characterizes the initial
settlement and subsequent division of
Icelandic lands. In addition to asking why
some farmsteads relocate perhaps we
should be asking why do so many early
farmsteads stay in the same location and
why do farmsteads stop moving after the
1 lth century.
Conclusion
For the time being, farmstead relocation
appears to be caught in a paradox: the
evidence indicates that it is a relatively rare
phenomenon on a local level but at the
same time there are examples from around
Iceland. The fact that relocations seem to
be largely restricted to the Viking Age also
suggests some unifying dynamic yet it is
not obviously reducible to a universal
underlying cause. Any or all of the factors
discussed could have played into the
decision of an individual household to
abandon one site and rebuild their
farmstead in a new location. The large size
of many relocated farmsteads suggests that
land rights and the availability of labor,
both within and outside the household,
may have been requisite conditions for
relocation but they do not constitute a
motive for relocation.
Farmstead relocation, while
uncommon, may be very important for our
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