Creating Diasporic Scandinavian Identities in Viking Age 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.

The Viking Age migrations that settled the North Atlantic resulted in a diaspora, creating a series of colonies that looked back to Scandinavia for their shared historical identity. This paper focuses on the diasporic experience in Iceland and the formation of a new Icelandic ethnic identity. The origin and ethnicity of the settlers of Iceland can be approached through written sources, archaeological remains, isotopic analyses, and genetic studies. Written sources—sagas, chronicles, law books—agree that the population consisted of mostly (though not exclusively) Norse settlers from Norway and the Scandinavian colonies in the British Isles. Recent genetic studies support a multi-ethnic origin of the Icelandic settlers. However, the texts and the genetics diverge in the proportions of the settlers vis-à-vis their places of origin. A somewhat more homogeneous picture is provided by the archaeological record, which has yielded the material correlates of a relatively uniform identity that is culturally Norse and religiously Norse pagan. This paper reviews the diverse datasets available for Viking Age Iceland to unravel the complex picture of the origins of the early Icelanders and the processes involved in the subsequent genesis of a new Icelandic identity.

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): 38925.0