The Role of Small Dwellings in the Viking Age Settlement of Iceland

Summary

This is an abstract from the "New Work in Medieval Archaeology, Part 2: Crossing Boundaries, Materialities, and Identities" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Historical accounts of the Viking Age settlement of Iceland largely focus on the lives of elite colonists and landowners. Although these texts are clear that non-elite and enslaved individuals were present and played a critical role in the settlement of the island, archaeological researchers have struggled to identify these people in the material record. This is, in part, due to the singular space of Norse farmsteads, in which household members, from landowner to enslaved, generally lived and worked together. We discuss new research from Hegranes, North Iceland that has revealed the presence of small dwellings in the early phases of settlement that hold the promise of revealing the lives of the non-elite. The small dwellings are located on marginal land and exhibit economic and subsistence strategies as well as architectural features that distinguish them from other excavated farmsteads. They had short occupations and do not appear as a site type after the Viking Age. These observations suggest a social and ecological role in the settlement that is unknown from later historical and ethnographic texts. We present new excavation data from the site of Kotið, a small dwelling located on marginal land that dates from the earliest phase of settlement.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• New Work in Medieval Archaeology, Part 2: Crossing Boundaries, Materialities, and Identities   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37885.0