The Norse landnám on the North Atlantic islands: an environmental impact assessment

Abstract

The Norse colonisation or landnám of the North Atlantic islands of the Faroes, Iceland, and Greenland from the ninth century AD onwards provides opportunities to examine human environmental impacts on ‘pristine’ landscapes on an environmental gradient from warmer, more maritime conditions in the east to colder, more continental conditions in the west. This paper considers key environmental contrasts across the Atlantic and initial settlement impacts on the biota and landscape. Before landnám, the modes of origin of the biota (which resulted in boreo-temperate affinities), a lack of endemic species, limited diversity, and no grazing mammals on the Faroes or Iceland, were crucial in determining environmental sensitivity to human impact and, in particular, the impact of introduced domestic animals. Gathering new data and understanding their geographical patterns and changes through time are seen as crucial when tackling fundamental questions about human interactions with the environment, which are relevant to both understanding the past and planning for the future.

Archaeoentomological Perspectives on Dorset Occupations in Newfoundland: A Case Study from the Site of Phillip’s Garden (EeBi-1)

“…In the North Atlantic, the body of work on anthropogenic and ecological changes due to or enhanced by human activities and cultural practices has mostly focused on Norse populations and other agro-pastoral occupations (Amorosi et al, 1997;Simpson et al, 2001;Panagiotakopulu and Buckland, 2013;Forbes et al, 2014;Ledger et al, 2014;Panagiotakopulu and Buchan, 2015). Human establishments in these "pristine" environments had a profound and marked effect on the fauna and flora (Amorosi et al, 1997;Dugmore et al, 2005). In contrast, Native American cultural groups, including the First Nations and ancestral Inuit, are often assumed by non-archaeologists to have very little to no impact on their environment (Billington, 1981;Dickason, 1997).…”

The First European Colonization of the North Atlantic

“…Iceland has lost an estimated 90 % of the forest and 40 % of the soil that was present at settlement (Arnalds 2001). There has been a sustained effort using the techniques of environmental archaeology as well as geography, paleoclimatology and history to understand the chronology of this impact and the dynamics behind it (Dugmore et al 2005a;Dugmore et al 2005b;McGovern et al 2007;McGovern et al 1988). Icelandic subsistence was until recently based on wool production, and fishing as will be discussed below.…”

Foraging and farming as niche construction: stable and unstable adaptations

“…As agriculture moved west, it was progressively less suited to the environments it encountered. In Greenland a combination of circumstances including environmental degradation and climate change led to the extinction of farming after some 400 years [107]. Britain provides a prehistoric analogue: farmers moving into the northern and western uplands cleared the oak and hazel woodland, exposing the soils to the increasing rainfall.…”