Coastal connections, local fishing, and sustainable egg harvesting: patterns of Viking Age inland wild resource use in Mývatn district, Northern Iceland

Abstract

The 'Landscapes of Settlement Project' has carried out archaeological and paleoenvironmental research in the Lake Mývatn region of N. Iceland since 1996. Animal bone collections dating from the late 9th century to the early 13th century AD have been recovered from five sites in different ecological zones around the lake, and three of these sites provide multiple phases datable through radiocarbon, artefacts, and volcanic tephra. Modern systematic biological and geological investigations in the Mývatn district date to the 19th century and a detailed picture of the recent ecology can be combined with both archaeological and historical evidence for long term resource exploitation by humans in this inland region. Analysis of bird bones and bird eggshell suggests that the locally managed sustainable harvest of migratory waterfowl eggs carried out over the last 150 years extends back to the 9th century. These inland archaeofauna also include significant numbers of marine fish and sea birds, marine mollusca, and a few seal and porpoise bones. Marine fish remains recovered indicate specialised transport of partial skeletons missing most cranial and some thoracic vertebrae, suggesting that a cured fish product was being regularly brought to inland farms during the early years of the settlement. Inter-regional exchange and a pre-Hanseatic artisanal fish trade prior to AD 1000 suggests the importance of preserved marine fish in early Scandinavian economies, and may shed light on the source of the 11th century 'fish event horizon' recently documented in southern Britain.

Reservoirs and Radiocarbon:14C Dating Problems in Mývatnssveit, Northern Iceland

“…Extensive excavations have shown that Hofstaöir was a large, high-status farm; Hrisheimar was a smaller farmstead involved in specialized iron working; and Gâsir a later coastal trading center. From tephrochronology and previous 14 C measurements, Hofstaöir and Hrisheimar are estimated to have been occupied between the 9th-12th centuries AD and Gâsir between the 12th-15th centuries AD (McGovern et al 2006). At each site, the MRE or FRE was calculated using 14 C measurements of multiple samples of domestic material discarded during occupation within a single, sealed archaeological midden deposit, associated with a single archaeological phase.…”

“…At some sites, the human bone appears older than the horse, e.g. by -200 1 4 C yr at Ytri-Neslönd (McGovern et al 2006) (see Table 1). In this example, the human burial was also stratigraphically above the landnâm tephra fall; therefore, the 1 4 C determination on the human bone collagen appeared to be too old.…”

“…cattle, pigs, and horses). As well as these animals, the Norse settlers in Myvatnssveit also exploited resources from both the surrounding area and coastal regions-including terrestrial plants, freshwater fish, and wildfowl, along with marine fish and mollusks-transported inland via extensive trade and exchange networks (McGovern et al 2006(McGovern et al , 2007. The dating program indicated a possible influence of 1 4 C reservoir effects when measurements from human and horse bones, found in close association in pre-Christian graves, were compared.…”

Cultural adaptation, compounding vulnerabilities and conjunctures in Norse Greenland

“…However, stratified archaeological sites document the long-term sustainable exploitation of sea birds on both Sandoy in the Faroes (9, 23) and migratory waterfowl around Lake Mývatn in Iceland (15).…”

“…Production from imported domestic animals was supplemented by extensive hunting of seals and small whales, marine and freshwater fishing, wild fowling, egg collection, and in Greenland, caribou hunting (15)(16)(17). Large archaeofauna (animal bone collections) and a growing number of stable isotope measurements on Viking age and medieval human skeletons (15,18,19) show that these wild species (especially marine fish) provided storable buffers against terrestrial pasture productivity fluctuations and stock loss, and they constituted a regular part of the normal diet across the North Atlantic. In Greenland, the role of wild resources took on a unique importance, because Norse settlers exploited the huge populations of migratory harp and hooded seals that move along the southwest coast in spring (19).…”