Iceland (Other Keyword)
1-25 (862 Records)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Governance and Globalization in the North Atlantic", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. The Christian conversion of Iceland at the beginning to the 11th century marks the integration of the island into the broader European religious community and the institutional hierarchy of the Catholic church. Archaeological work shows that the conversion entailed a rapid replacement of pagan practice and adoption of...
Cod, Sand & Stone: Proto-Industrial Scale, Medieval, Commercial Fishing at Gufuskalar in Western Iceland (2015)
At the start of the 15th century a major commercial fishing was built on the far western coast of Iceland at a farm called Gufuskalar. During the winter months cod fish were caught, processed and dried on site for trade with continental European merchants. This paper details the rescue excavations at the site and discusses some of our preliminary results. SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and Center for Digital Antiquity Collaborative...
Colonialism and modernity in medieval (?) Iceland (2020)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Medieval to Modern Transitions and Historical Archaeology" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. This paper explores the implications of an archaeology of colonialism and modernity in Iceland. Colonialism in ‘Old Society’ Iceland was realized in the regulation of trade, and informal and formal administration by Norway, England, and Denmark. Colonial administrators and foreign tourists often viewed Iceland as...
Competition, Reformation, and Modernization in Western Iceland (2020)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Medieval to Modern Transitions and Historical Archaeology" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Research on North Atlantic societies’ transitions from medieval to early modern cultures has recently become more theoretically engaged and informed. In Iceland, historical research has framed the most important processes in this transition as changes in religious affiliation and in the trading partners that linked...
Conduits of Dispersal. Dematerializing an early twentieth century village in Iceland. (2013)
This paper explores the process of ruination in terms of networks and channels of dispersal; how the materiality of a whole village is stripped by various agencies which move things along. Drawing especially on recent work in human geography and new mobility and materiality turn, this study takes an industrial fishing village on an island in the bay of Reykjavík to examine the processes and conduits through which the village is de-materialized. The village was established at the beginning of the...
Dependent Independence? Identity, Interconnection, and Isolation in Iceland (AD 870-1800) (2017)
This paper will explore intersections among international trade, domestic economy, and identity in Iceland from the time of its settlement shortly before AD 870 until its quest for post-colonial, independent nation status in the late-19th century. Focusing primarily on three periods—the Viking Age: AD 870-1050, the medieval/Sturlung period: ca. AD 1150-1300, and the Early Modern era, ca. 1500-1800—this presentation will integrate archaeological data gleaned from a range of recent projects with...
Developing Community Engagement in Icelandic Maritime Archaeology: Where to Begin? (2024)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)", at the 2024 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. This paper aims to discuss the current state of maritime archaeology within Iceland, and highlights the challenges within the field which need to be overcome in order to improve the management of sites. The management and monitoring of underwater sites in particular in Iceland is severely deficient due to a number of factors, and...
Diasporas and Identities in the Viking Age (2015)
This paper briefly sets out and analyses recent terminological discussions among archaeologists and other scholars working on regions influenced and settled by 'vikings' in the Viking Age, c.800-c.1050CE. 'Diaspora' has, perhaps belatedly, been a term applied to the pattern of social and economic relationships linking some communities across Europe and the North Atlantic. The applicability of the term 'diaspora' or of seeing a series of diasporic communities will be considered alongside the more...
The Ecclesiastical Economy. The Power of the Church in Post-Reformation Iceland (2023)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Governance and Globalization in the North Atlantic", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. This paper explores the way the Bishop's seat of Skálholt in south Iceland managed its diocese during the 17th and 18th centuries and especially, its role in mediating the global and the local through its administrative structure. Drawing on both the rich archaeological research at the site and a wealth of documentary...
Environmental Variation and the Sustainability of Farms: Investigating Effects of Erosion in Northern Iceland (2018)
The initial colonization of Iceland in the late 9th century had a profound impact on the fragile environment of the North Atlantic island. Settlement and the introduction of livestock resulted in widespread erosion and the replacement of woodlands with meadows and heaths. Changes in the environment are assumed to have played a role in determining settlement patterning and subsistence strategies. While marginal highland areas were most seriously affected, resulting in farmstead abandonment, the...
Iceland and the Colonial Project (2013)
This paper revolves around a central dilemma: whether to see Iceland as colonizer or colonized. On the one hand, it was linked to the Danish project of colonialism outside Europe, benefitting from access to exotic goods and influenced by ideologies of race and whiteness. On the other hand, Iceland was itself a dependency of Denmark, and from the nineteenth century, developed a discourse of nationalism and independence. This paper will examine the tensions of Iceland as colonizer/colonized...
Iceland During the 16th Century - Proto-Globalization at the Fringe of Europe (2020)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Medieval to Modern Transitions and Historical Archaeology" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. From the time of the settlement in the late 9thcentury Iceland has always been connected with Northern Europe, despite the island´s remote location. Strong political, religious and economic links existed with Norway, Denmark and then, in the later medieval period, with England and Germany. The 16thcentury is a time of...
Icelanders, Germans and Danes – Triangulating colonial encounters in Iceland during the 15th to 17th centuries (2017)
During the 15th to the 17th centuries, many Germans from Hamburg and Bremen spent their summer in the many trading stations along the extensive coast lines of Iceland. Although Iceland was a part of the kingdom of Denmark, German merchants and sailors, clerics and physicians dominated economic and cultural life, granted by Danish authorities. The paper tries to untackle the different colonial aspects and explores the triangular power relations between Icelanders, Germans and Danes in the early...
Icelandic Livestock Improvement and an Emerging National Identity: Biometrical and Genetic Markers of a New Landscape (2015)
Early in the settlement of Iceland, social perceptions were imported along with herds of livestock primarily from Norway. Cultural identity and agricultural traditions can influence and react upon each other. Iceland provides a unique location to explore these intersections as an island intellectually connected to Europe but isolated from significant trade routes. An exploration of Iceland’s rich literary tradition suggests that the Icelandic social landscape coalesced and matured from the early...
The Inequalities of Households – Cemetery Management and Social Change in Early Medieval Iceland (2018)
In AD 1000 Icelanders adopted Christianity in an apparently swift and embracive fashion. The new tradition was implemented by discrete households that built private churches and cemeteries on their farms. These cemeteries were in use until the beginning of the 12th century and interred were all individuals of the household, men and women, the old and the young, householders and servants. The establishment, management, and abandonment sequences of these cemeteries reflect the religious, social,...
Interpretation of Midden Formation Processes at Three Farms in Skagafjörður, Northern Iceland using Thin Section Micromorphology and pXRF Chemostratigraphy (2015)
Skagafjörður, northern Iceland is a fertile valley bottom where farms established during the Landnám in the late 9th century are still occupied today. In this study, we examin middens from three farms: Reynistaður, Syðra-Skördugil, and Stóra Seyla. The middens show deposition from the Landnám through the Medieval Period. This research answers four questions: What is the sediment composition of the midden fill? What are the main modes of deposition? How do these deposits contribute to the...
Iron Production at Marginal Settlements in Northern Iceland (2018)
The environment of Iceland was rapidly and severely affected by the Norse Settlement, in particular by deforestation. In Iceland’s changing environment the production of iron, an essential material, became limited not by access to iron ore but by availability of wood to make charcoal fuel. The large-scale production of iron may be one of the primary processes that led to deforestation in Iceland due to the large need for charcoal. Investigations at Stekkjarborg on the farm of Keldudalur in...
Kotið: An Integrated Geoarchaeological Investigation (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Small Dwellings on the Viking Frontier: New Research from Kotið, North Iceland" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The site of Kotið, in Skagafjörður, northern Iceland, consists of several interposed components ranging from medieval outbuildings to a small dwelling from the first period of settlement in the region (ca. 870–930 CE). To understand how the inhabitants of Kotið constructed and reconstructed the buildings...
Life on the Northern Frontier, Bioarchaeological Reconstructions of 11th century Households in the Skagafjörður Region, North Iceland. (2016)
Iceland was settled in the 9th century by people of Norse and Celtic stock. Located on the margins of the Viking world, the Skagafjörður region was, by the 11th century, home to a large number of independent households forming core social units in a country without a king or central government. Although they maintained close ties with their old home world, ship arrivals were erratic and individual households were largely dependent on their own produce for survival. Early settlers lived in a...
Missing Bodies and Cat Skeletons: New Perspectives on Ritual in Viking Age Iceland (2015)
The research that has dominated Icelandic burial practices has until very recently been quite narrow. Burials were excavated to extract the skeleton and artifacts within the grave cut itself, leading to a central theory that Icelandic burials are poor in ritual and culture. Recent excavation and theories, however, have led to open area excavations of pagan cemeteries, which reveal much more complicated ritual. Snorri Sturlusson, the author of the famous Icelandic Sagas and Eddas, might give us...
Moveable Wealth. Poverty and Plenty in Postmedieval Iceland (2023)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Poverty And Plenty In The North", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. This paper explores the tension between moveable and immoveable wealth among different households and communities in postmedieval iceland. Drawing on archaeological research at several sites dating to the 17th and 18th centuries, the connections between human and object mobilities will be explored in relation to issues of social mobility in a...
NABO Artifacts
Project for artifact data from Norse sites across the North Atlantic islands, including Iceland, Greenland, and Shetland.
No Man Is an Island: Death and Burial on the Island of Haffjarðarey (2018)
During the 13th century Iceland became a major hub of the North Atlantic fishing industry sparking international conflict over fishing rights between mercantile interests from Norway, Denmark, England, the Netherlands and Northern Germany. From ca. 1200 - 1563 the Catholic Church and cemetery on the island of Haffjarðarey served as the burial place for the large geographic region of Eyjahreppur in western Iceland. The church and cemetery were closed during the Lutheran Reformation and the...
Of Fish and Plague: Death as Economic Opportunity at the Medieval Fishing Station of Gufuskálar, Iceland (2018)
The high morbidity (50% or greater) of Iceland’s Black Death in 1404 C.E. disrupted a rigidly hierarchical Icelandic social order and led to an inability to enforce social and legal constraints on Iceland’s labor classes. This newly untethered and mobile lower class searched for avenues for wealth creation previously unavailable. One avenue, in the century following Iceland’s Black Death, was through fishing and fish exports. During this period, previously tightly restricted fish exports...
‘On the Apparitions of Drowned Men’: Unnatural Death, Folklore, and Bioarchaeology at Haffjarðarey, Western Iceland. (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Burial, Space, and Memory of Unusual Death" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. The church of Saint Nicholas at Haffjarðarey (1200 to 1563 CE) was active during two outbreaks of bubonic plague, religious transitions, and the establishment of the Icelandic fishing industry. Both the church and cemetery were suddenly closed and abandoned in 1563 after the supposed sudden deaths of the priest and parishioners after...