Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.1991, Page 15

THE BURIAL SITE OF VIÐ KIRKJUGARÐ . .
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Christian customs. Thus grave-goods can oc-
cur in burials effected long after the society
in question adopted Christianity.
However, the question here is whether the
grave-goods from Sandur do in fact mirror
heathen burial custom. Most of the objects
recovered can easily be classified as beeing of
a personal nature or as belonging to the bu-
ried person’s attire - the items found hardly
really merit the term grave-goods at all.
In attempting to establish the nature of
the burials at Sandur it is natural to compare
them with the burials at Tjørnuvík. The
graves from both sites share many similari-
ties in their construction. On the basis of the
afore-mentioned ringed-pin, generally dated
to the lOth century, the burial site at Tjørnu-
vík is dated to the Viking Age and therefore
interpreted as heathen (Dahl 1968:191;
1970:65-66)6. In reports on the site the dead
are described as lying with their heads point-
ing north. This is, however, only partly true,
as four of the twelve graves are aligned east-
west (Arge 1990:fig.ll). Although there is
some variation in the alignment of Viking
Age burials in the north, an east-west orien-
tation is far from unusual.
In this context it is interesting to note that
one of the features instrumental to the in-
terpretation of the Haug burial site in North-
ern Norway as a heathen one, is the very
varied alignment of the individual graves. In
contrast, individual graves within purely
Christian cemeteries all seem to be orientat-
ed in the same direction - as a rule east-west
- although minor variations within this
alignment do occur (Sellevold 1989). These
observations could support an interpretation
of the site at Tjørnuvík as heathen and the
site at Sandur as Christian.
However, a closer study of the burial site
at Haug, leads one to consider whether local
topographical criteria might not in fact have
dictated the siting and direction of many of
the burials, as these are mainly, and quite
naturally, placed parallel to the area’s con-
tour lines. The same topographical consider-
ations may have been actual for the location
of the burials at Tjørnuvík as well as on San-
dur. On the latter site, the graves seem to
have been placed on the southern side of a
slightly sloping deposit of shifting sand.
Even though it is an established fact that
the east-west alignment prevailed as a result
of Christianization, the question of whether
a site is heathen or Christian cannot be de-
termined by orientation alone.
Another feature emphasized in the evalua-
tion of the Haug burial site, is the position in
which the dead were buried. The supine po-
sition - consisting of the body being laid
out on his or her back - is almost totally
dominant in Christian burials, as exempli-
fied at the graveyard by the so-called Thjod-
hilde’s church at Brattahlid in Ureenland. At
Haug on the other hand, the bodies had
been interred in a variety of positions — on
their back, their front or left or right sides.
Although somewhat less varied, the fact that
two to three of the buried were interred in a
lateral position, while the remainder had
been laid on their back, may indicate that
the site at Sandur was a heathen one.
Another important fact is that none of the
graves at Sandur overlap, but are placed end
to end in rows - another feature common of
Viking Age burial sites (Gráslund 1985:301).
The position of the burial site in relation
to the old dyke and the manner in which the
dead are buried with their personal posses-
sions could indicate that the site is a heathen
one. On the other hand there is nothing that