Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.1998, Síða 235

241
LANDSLØG f LANDNÁMSTÍÐ: FLOGSÁÐFRØÐILIG OG
GRÓKORNFRØÐILIG PRÓGV AV TOFTANESI
plexity of shieling use in the more restrict-
ed landscape of Faroe (Mahler, 1991) may
make this simple model more difficult to
apply. Toftanes neither looks like a shieling
nor is positioned like one (cf. Mahler,
1993), and its insect fauna does include el-
ements, like Xylodromus concinnus, which
would be expected as part of the indoor and
immediately peripheral house, byre and
barn fauna. Its proximity to the shore is in-
dicated by occasional members of the sea-
weed fauna, Cercyon littoralis and Omali-
um laeviusculum, but, unlike Langenes on
Langøya in Arctic Norway (Simpson et al.,
1998), the archaeology makes it diffrcult to
argue for a fishing station, rather than a
farm, although soil acidity at Toftanes
means that the only bone preserved is that
which has been bumt (Stummann Hansen,
1991). The essentially natural faunas from
the site include elements which are likely to
have been brought in with peat, rather than
structural turves, and this is particularly the
case with S1563, with its large number of
water beetles. Dinnin (in Dinnin et al, un-
publ.) found the dytiscid Hydroporus pu-
bescens to be common in peaty pools on
high ground in the Faroes, and West (1937)
notes it as the most common water beetle.
The sample is best interpreted as the re-
mains of peat incorporating some occupa-
tion debris. The weevils, including the
feeder on grasses Notaris aethiops, previ-
ously recorded only once on Sandoy (West,
1937), and the heather feeder Micrelus eri-
cae, usually found on Calluna vulgaris
(Bengtson, 1981), may also reflect the in-
corporation of old material from peat, a
problem not restricted to the insects (cf.
Simpson et al., 1998).
An absent fauna may indicate an absent
habitat. Was the region around Leirvík at
landnám sufficiently productive, and pro-
tected from the weather, to preclude the
need to collect hay, and is the move towards
a hay-dependent economy a reflection of
habitat destruction (cf. Jóhansen, 1985),
and a worsening climate into the late and
post-medieval period? A pattern of in-
creased grazing pressure and soil loss has
emerged from the tephra-constrained se-
quences of southern Iceland (Thorarinsson,
1961; Dugmore and Buckland, 1991), but
more work is necessary on the Faroese sit-
uation.
Conclusions and future
palaeoecological research
The excavations at Toftanes have provided
the opportunity for a palaeoecological in-
vestigation into land-use history at or soon
after the generally accepted date of land-
nám in the Faroes. It is impossible to know
if this is the first Viking building at Tof-
tanes, and although an even older building
may occupy better-drained land currently
beneath more recent houses immediately
above the site, there is no evidence for this.
The pollen data, if indicative of land-use
contemporaneous with habitation and in its
reasonably close vicinity, reveal a largely
unwooded landscape in which grazing was
the dominant agricultural activity and in
which arable cultivation was not of major
significance. It is conjectured that a phase
of over-grazing or some abandonment took
place and that this could have been fol-
lowed by re-intensification of activity. If