Carrying Salmon to Scotland?: Late Norse Exploitation of Salmonid Fishes at Earl’s Bu, Orkney

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Fish, Oyster, Whale: The Archaeology of Maritime Traditions", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

The Late Norse site of Earl’s Bu is a high status farmstead site located in Orphir on Orkney’s Mainland. Described in the 13th-century Orkneyinga Saga, the site served not only as Earl Harald’s residence, but hosted a series of documented feasts, the largest of which reportedly took place at Christmas in 1135 CE. Biomolecular analysis indicates that a feature of these feasts may have been both locally sourced brown trout, as well as Atlantic salmon, a species not endemic to the Orkney archipelago. This paper summarises the bulk stable isotope and ZooMS results from the site, with a particular focus on differentiation of brown trout, sea trout, and Atlantic salmon. This paper will also explore the Norse-Scottish foodways which may have resulted in salmon imports to this Orkney site– a unique point in the long tradition of Scottish salmon exports in the North Sea Basin area.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Fish, Oyster, Whale: The Archaeology of Maritime Traditions   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow