Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.1991, Page 103

Insects, Man and the Earliest Settlement
of the Faroe Islands: a case not proven
P. C. Buckland
Introduction
The time of the first settlement of the Far-
oe Islands has been the subject of much
discussion and the historical and archaeo-
logical evidence has recently been extens-
ively reviewed by Símun Arge (1989).
Both the place name Faereyjar, islands of
sheep, and the historical record seem to
indicate settlement before the arrival of
the first Norse settler, Grímur Kamban.
The Irish monk, Dicuil, writing at the
court of Charlemagne’s successors in
France ca. 825, (Tierney, 1967) refers to
islands two days sailing from the outer
Scottish islands, once occupied by Irish
monks (papar / culdees) but, by his time,
abandoned to sheep and seabirds because
of the activities of Norse pirates. His com-
ments are usually taken to refer to the Far-
oes, yet these papar remain curiously elus-
ive in the archaeological record. The pal-
aeoecological record, however, appears to
have been more productive. The detailed
pollen studies of Jóhannes Jóhansen have
not only established the sequence of
changes through the Holocene in the Far-
oe Islands in some considerable detail (cf.
Jóhansen, 1975; 1982; 1985), but also have
provided evidence for the impact of Man
since Landnám. Jóhansen (1971; 1979;
1985) has put forward arguments for the
cultivation of cereals during a phase of
Landnám, some two hundred years before
the traditional date of Norse settlement in
the ninth century. Despite the apparently
conclusive nature of the palaeoecological
record, the interpretation has remained
contentious (Jóhansen, 1986; Krogh,
1986) .
If the apparent historical reference is
taken to refer to elsewhere (e.g. Arge,
1989; Krogh, 1986), then all rests upon the
palynology, since any archaeological
remains may have been obscured by subse-
quent Norse activities. The Paper may
have been so thinly spread as to be virt-
ually undetectable in the archaeological
record, and their artifacts are likely to be
indistinguishable from most early Norse
pieces. Similar problems exist in Iceland,
where, despite references in íslendingabók
and a further comment of Dicuil’s (Svein-
bjarnardóttir & Buckland 1983), the early
Irish settlers have likewise remained elus-
ive in the archaeological record (Svein-
bjarnardóttir, 1972; Eldjárn, 1989). Rec-
Fróðskaparrit 38.-39. bók (1989-90): 107-113