Le Nord : revue internationale des Pays de Nord - 01.06.1943, Page 131

EXPEDITION TO ICELAND IN 1939
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by a vertical section, a “profile,” of the layers of the soil the
individual eruptions can easily be distinguished. For many years
Mr. Thórarinsson and Mr. Bjarnason, Director of the Forests,
have studied the profiles in the greater part of Iceland, and now
— particularly by collaboration with the archæologists in 1939 —
they have succeeded in setting up an applicable dating of the
individual layers in accordance with the evidence of the written
sources. This of course will be an immense help for the archæo-
logical dating of the sites of houses.
One of the most serious disasters in historical times is the
eruption of the famous volcano of Hekla in South-West Iceland
in 1300. On this occasion the Thjórsár Valley north of the vol-
cano, which was one of the richest and most fertile valleys of
the country, together with its upwards of twenty large farms
was destroyed by the shower of ashes, and has been uninhabited
ever since. To this day the bottom of the valley consists of barren
plains of ashes, on which the wind plays with the light pumice
gravel and sometimes uncovers rests of walls of the old farms
or white human bones in the cemetery of Skjeljestadir.
The Thjórsár Valley, which with some exaggeration has been
termed “The Pompeii of Iceland,” thus offered a tempting archæo-
logical problem, and hence it was selected as the chief field of
activity for the expedition of 1939. In the valley in all six sites
of farms and the above-mentioned cemetery were excavated.
In the district of Borgarfjördur two places were examined, one
of them a ruin at Lundur designated as a heathen temple, to which
we shall revert later.
The oldest of the houses examined proved to consist of a
single large long-house, a hall or “skáli,” with a curved main wall,
curving inward towards the gables and without partitions or
with traces of only a single thin wooden cross-wall. This type
of house in the middle of the floor has a large fire place, the
so-called “long-fire” (langelda), the blazing fire of which was a
necessary appurtenance when the warriors were drinking in the
hall. At the main walls there were boarded raised platforms
where benches and tables might be placed, and where the people
of the farm spent the night in sleeping-skins. The walls were
made of earth and turf, as it has been the custom in this country
poor in wood down to the present time. Probably, however, we
should not take a too pessimistic view of the settlers’ possibilities