Land in Landscapes Circum Landnám: An Integrated Study of Settlements in Reykholtsdalur, Iceland

The initial settlement of Iceland in the 9th and 10th centuries AD was based on animal husbandry, with an emphasis on dairy cattle and sheep. For this activity, land resources that offered a range of grazing and fodder production opportunities were required to sustain farmsteads. In this paper, the nature of land within the boundaries of settlements in an area of Western Iceland centered on Reykholt, which became the estate of the writer and chieftain Snorri Sturluson in the 13th century, is analysed with a geographical information systems (GIS) approach. The results, combining historical, archaeological, and environmental data with the GIS-based topographic analysis, suggests that, although inherent land qualities seem to have played a part in shaping the initial hierarchy of settlement in the area, it was the acquisition of additional property and of access to resources outside the valley that ultimately pushed Reykholt to the forefront in the hierarchical order. Institute of Archaeology, University College London, 31-34 Gordon Square, London WC1H OPY, UK. School of Biological and Environmental Sciences, University of Stirling, Stirling FK9 4LA, Scotland, UK. Corresponding author [email protected]. Introduction Land—its quality, organization, and management—is an aspect of society-environment relationships that has received little attention until recently in studies of landnám (translated as “land-take”), the period of initial settlement and colonization of Iceland which, according to Íslendingabók (The Book of Icelanders) and supported by archaeological discoveries, took place in the 9th and 10th centuries AD (Benediktsson 1996, Sveinbjarnardóttir 2004, Vésteinsson 1998). Land organization in southern and western Norway during the Viking and Early Middle Ages, around the time of the Icelandic landnám, was characterised by manortype estates controlled by a small elite and with a larger dependent group retained to work the estate (Stylegar 2002). Similar estates are thought to have emerged in Orkney and Shetland (the Northern Isles) during the Viking Age and Later Medieval Period (Crawford and Balin-Smith 1999, Steinnes 1959). Since Iceland was settled largely from Norway via the Northern Isles, it seems fair to assume that a similar type of land organization was also introduced to Iceland with settlement. Written sources, archaeological surveys, and excavations indicate that the settlement pattern in Iceland was that of individual farmsteads placed at even intervals on the best farming land, with households consisting of a single or several families (Sveinbjarnardóttir 1992, Vésteinsson 1998), similar to today’s rural settlement pattern. Supporting zooarchaeological evidence, coupled with remains of animal houses, indicates that subsistence strategies from the outset were largely geared towards a reliance on domestic livestock, initially with the main emphasis on dairy cattle, and then increasingly on sheep (e.g., Amorosi 1996, Hermanns-Auðardóttir 1989). Appropriate land resources and their use at different times of the year were an essential requirement to support these activities (Vésteinsson et al. 2002). An understanding of the attributes and signifi cance of land during colonization and settlement is therefore vital if we are to recognize the way in which land resources were used to create and maintain social structures. Despite an implicit acknowledgment of the signifi cance of this, there has been little attempt to characterize and explain the role land qualities played during the emergence of the early Icelandic cultural landscape. One aim of this paper is to attempt to establish whether land attributes infl uenced the initial settlement process and its further development, and what this infl uence may tell us about social organization in early Iceland. The study area is centered on the Reykholt estate in Reykholtsdalur, western Iceland, at 21o17'W, 64o40'N, which has been the focus of the multidisciplinary Reykholt project (www.snorrastofa.is). Extensive archaeological investigations have been carried out at the Reykholt site (e.g., Sveinbjarnardóttir 2005b, 2006). The area is delimited by the Hvítá River to the north and the Reykjadalsá River and Steindórsstaðaöxl and adjoining hills to the south (Figs. 1 and 2) and covers 105.6 km. It is 21 km from west to east and 8.5 km at its widest point north to south. The area was featured in a recent study of the politics and development of early settlement patterns in Iceland (Vésteinsson et al. 2002), where settlements were divided into three categories based on environmental type and access to resources. This division into settlement types forms the basis for the topographical analysis discussed in this paper. The model is also put to the test, and the question of why Reykholt became the most important and 2008 1:1–15 Journal of the North Atlantic Journal of the North Atlantic Volume 1 2 wealthiest farm in the valley in the medieval period is explored. To achieve our aims, we place topographical (geographical information systems [GIS] based) analyses into a thoroughly researched historical (documentary source based), archaeological (excavation and survey based) and environmental (palaeoenvironmental studies based) context from the Reykholtsdalur area.