Political and Economic patchworks in Viking Age Iceland

Summary

The 9th century Norse settlement of Iceland resulted in a system of semi-territorial petty chiefdoms, with local and island-wide regular assemblies. The volcanic island was divided up into four quarters, each with three or four local assemblies. Farmers had to pledge their allegiance to one of the chiefs within their quarter, creating a patchwork of alliances. Farms themselves may also have been cobbled together from non-contiguous blocks which allowed access to different environmental resources. Recent settlement pattern work in North Iceland suggests that this territorial patchwork resulted in a remarkably stable settlement system. Conversely, geophysical and coring surveys at the local Hegranesthing assembly site suggests that an early farmstead was removed from the assembly site itself. This combination points to stable property rights for households during the Viking Age, but a more dynamic political environment. The blurring of environmental boundaries and political frontiers with non-contiguous political and economic entities may have helped create a stable system of property rights, even in the absence of a strong central government.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)   •
• The Interaction between Political and Ecological Frontiers

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 16870