Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2015, Síða 44

Elín Ósk Hreiðarsdóttir, Guðrún Alda Gísladóttir,
Kristborg Þórsdóttir And Ragnheiður Gló Gylfadóttir
In the valley of Þjórsárdalur farm aban-
donment has been directly linked to the
eruptions of Hekla. Þjórsárdalur is about 15
km northwest of Hekla, further away from
the volcano than Rangárvellir, but much
more seriously affected by early historic
eruptions due to the generally northerly di-
rection of Hekla’s tephra fall-out. The idea of
Þjórsárdalur as the Pompeii of the north was
promoted by Daniel Bruun in 1896 (Bruun
1897, 24) and in 1939 a Nordic archaeologi-
cal expedition excavated five farm sites in the
valley (Stenberger ed. 1943). The Þjórsárdalur
project was a milestone in the development
of archaeology in Iceland and from the mid-
dle of the 20th century onwards the focus of
Icelandic archaeologists was very much on
marginal settlements and their abandonment
(See e.g. Eldjárn 1949, 1951, 1961; Rafnsson
1977,1990; Sveinbjarnardóttir 1992).
Sigurður Þórarinsson was the first to
demonstrate extensive farm abandonment
in the highland periphery in Iceland dur-
ing the llth and 12th centuries and in the
1970s he proposed a hypothesis explaining
the abandonment of peripheral settlements
in Iceland. In Þórarinsson’s view single dev-
astating events such as volcanic eruptions
and glacial outburst floods may have af-
fected geographically limited areas but the
extensive farm abandonment during the
llth and 12th centuries was due to an over-
estimation of land quality in marginal areas
resulting in overgrazing and loss of vegeta-
tion (Þórarinsson 1977).
For a long time it was believed that the
settlement in Þjórsárdalur had been com-
pletely destroyed in a major volcanic erup-
tion of Hekla. The debate was about whether
this was the eruption of 1104 or 1300. Ar-
chaeologist Vilhjálmur Örn Vilhjálmsson
began new research at the site of Stöng in
Þjórsárdalur in the 1980s (Vilhjálmsson
1989). He argued that the abandonment
of the Þjórsárdalur farms had proceeded
gradually up until the middle of the 13th
century as a result of complex processes of
erosion and loss of vegetation set in mo-
tion by volcanic activity, but was not occa-
sioned by a single eruption. Vilhjámsson's
model of settlement and abandonment of
Þjórsárdalur suggested more complexity
in the process of abandonment in the area
than earlier theories and even if it likely
represents a more realistic model of farm
abandonment and has received some sup-
port (e.g. Dugmore et al. 2007), it has been
largely overlooked by Icelandic scholarship
(see e.g. Karlsson 2000, 45).
During the last 10-15 years there has
been greater emphasis on studying the his-
tory of settlements in lowland areas. Re-
search in northeastern Iceland has revealed
up to a 30% decrease in the numbers of
farmsteads in the 12th and 13th centuries
in areas such as Mývatnssveit and Reykja-
hverfi where the abandonments cannot
be attributed to obvious environmental
changes (Lárusdóttir 2007; Vésteinsson
2008). In general, recent research suggests
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