Douglas J. Bolender

The Viking Age settlement pattern of Langholt, North Iceland: Results of the Skagafjörður Archaeological Settlement Survey

An archaeological survey of the Viking Age settlement pattern in the Langholt region of North Iceland suggests that being early in this sequence conferred tremendous advantages to the settlers of this previously uninhabited landscape. Many of the farms established during the settlement of Iceland (which began about a.d. 870) are in use today. However, accessing the Viking Age landscape is difficult. In Langholt the earliest layers of most farmsteads are buried under a thousand years of occupational debris, while the abandoned sites have been covered by extensive soil deposition. Here we report on our coring and test excavation results that outline Viking Age farmstead location, establishment date, and maximum size by the end of the Viking Age. There is a strong correlation between farmstead size and establishment date. This correlation suggests that during the rapid settlement of Iceland, the farmsteads established by earlier settlers were wealthier and that wealth endured.

Reassembling the household for Icelandic archaeology: a contribution to comparative political economy

SUMMARY: Between the 11th and 19th centuries, household archaeology in Iceland comprises rural, dispersed farmsteads notable for their boundedness and stability, suggesting productive and reproductive autonomy. Insights from Actor-Network Theory and entanglement theory help ‘disassemble’ this assumption by shifting our focus first to the agencies, flows and dependences that comprise a political economy without assuming the household’s relations of production a priori. Architecture, settlement patterns, landscape and midden accumulations from the Langholt region in Skagafjörður, North Iceland, along with historical data illustrate that households in Iceland are actually marked by social dissolution, alienation and instability through dramatic political-economic dis- and re-assembling which in turn produces the stability in the material manifestation of the household. These data caution against a simple relationship between the household and archaeological farmstead, and suggest that measures of dependency and instability are critical to a comparative method for unravelling entanglements between capitalist and non-capitalist political economies.

An archeology of moments: Christian conversion and practice in a medieval household cemetery

The Christian conversion of Iceland in A.D. 1000 was accompanied by distinct changes in religious practice and ritual places. In the following century, household cemeteries were established at many farms. Examining the early Christian household cemetery at Seyla in northern Iceland, we explore how the establishment, usage, and closure of these cemeteries provide an opportunity to examine how the new religion was realized in Icelandic society. At the same time Seyla represents cemetery management at a household level, which provides rarely witnessed household level social actions. The individual moments discussed can be used to enlighten the agency of family as well as its realization of the social and religious changes of the 11th century. Here, we argue that the isolation and discussion of these specific archeological moments at Seyla add to our understanding of the experiences and actions of early Christian households during a time of religious transformation.