Fowling and Food Security in the Faroe Islands

Summary

Seabird fowling has long played an important role in the traditional domestic economy of the Faroe Islands, a small North Atlantic archipelago. Direct evidence for seabird exploitation in the earliest period of Faroese prehistory has been lacking, however. In this paper, I present new archaeofaunal evidence for substantial and sustained seabird exploitation in the Faroe Islands from the 9th through 13th centuries CE. The data suggest that seabirds represented a significant resource in the Faroese subsistence economy from the earliest Norse settlement onward. Fowling thus represented one component of a broad-based subsistence regime that was aimed primarily at decreasing vulnerability to food shortfalls, particularly those caused by failures in the agro-pastoral economy. When compared to typical contemporaneous archaeofauna from Norse Greenland and Iceland, the role of fowling in the Faroese domestic economy is quite large. The Faroe Islands in this respect appear more similar to some northern insular communities of the British Isles, and the Outer Hebrides in particular.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 22294