Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.1998, Page 282

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LATE HOLOCENEINSECT FAUNAS FROM MYKINES, FAROE ISLANDS, WITH
OBSERVATIONS ON ASSOCIATED POLLEN AND EARLY SETTLEMENT RECORDS
Fig. 1. Sites mentioned in the text
Mynd 1. Støð, sum eru nevnd í tekstinum.
Introduction
In 1985, as part of a project examining hu-
man impact on the North Atlantic Islands
(Buckland, 1992a), several sites originally
sampled by the late Jóhannes Jóhansen dur-
ing his studies of the vegetation history of
the Faroes (Jóhansen, 1985) were revisited
with a view to sampling for their fossil in-
sect faunas. Research in Iceland had al-
ready indicated the extent of anthro-
pochorous faunas shortly after Norse land-
nám (e.g. Buckland et al, 1985; Buckland
et al., 1991), and it was hoped that careful
sampling, with Jóhansen, of the original lo-
calities where pre-Norse settlement had
been inferred from the pollen data, would
throw additional light on the problems of
Fig. 2. Sites on Mykines: Lambi (pollen); Uldalíð
(beetles and pollen)
Mynd 2. Støð í Mykinesi: Lambi (flogsáð); Uldalíð
(klukkur og flogsáð).
the origins of the first settlers. Some of the
results have already been discussed (Buck-
land. 1992b), but the details of the faunas
were not included in that article and there
were only passing references to the palyno-
logical records. This paper remedies these
omissions and also seeks to make a contri-
bution to the landnám debate. In 1986, the
modern beetle fauna of the Lambi puffinery
on Mykines was also collected for compar-
ison with the fossil assemblages.
Mykines and earlier work
The small island of Mykines is the most re-
mote and westerly of the inhabited islands
of the Faroes group, lying at 62° 07’ N. and
7° 35’ W (Fig. 1). The island reaches a
maximum elevation of 560 m, and presents
steep cliffs to the open ocean on all sides.
Only on the south side is it possible to ap-
proach a small, poorly sheltered harbour