Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.1971, Page 147

A Palaeobotanical Study Indicating a Previking Settlement 155
Archaeological aspects. The Faroe Islands are mentioned for
the first time by the Irish clergyman Dicuil, who in 825 a.d.
wrote a geography: DE MENSURIS ORBIS TERRAE (On
the dimensions of the earth). In that book he writes (in trans-
lation):
“. . . . There are many other islands in the north British sea.
They can be reached from the northern islands of Britain by
sailing for two days and two nights on a straight course under
full sail, if the wind is favourable the whole time. A devout
priest has related to me that he navigated this route in two
summer days and the intervening night, in a small boat with
two thwarts, and landed on one of the islands. These islands
are for the most part small, and there are mostly narrow sounds
between them, and in these islands hermits, come from our
Scotland (i.e. Ireland) by boat, have lived for almost a hundred
years. But as they have always been uninhabited from the
beginning of the world, so have Norwegian vikings caused
them to be devoid of munks, but they are full of innumerable
sheep and many different kinds of sea birds. I have never seen
these islands mentioned in the books of other authors.”
Historians and geographers agree that the islands Dicuil here
mentions must be the Faroes. A natural assumption would
then be that the settlement in Tjørnuvík was made by these
men. In that case, however, they must have come about 100
years earlier than Dicuil says, or alternatively, the radiocarbon
datings are too early.
Of course, radiocarbon datings cannot be regarded as histori-
cal dates. I am, however, not inclined to believe that the
datings are too early, since the material which was used for
dating was peat. Investigations will now be instigated at other
sites in the Faroes.
It now remains to find some objects left by these inhabitants.
This is a job for the archaeologists, but I would like to stress
again that Montia seeds are abundant just above the settlement
horizon. It might indicate, in my opinion, that buildings of
some sort — for animals or people — were located not far