Landslides, Erosion, and Inequality: Assessing Social and Environmental Change at Neighboring Farmsteads in Northern Iceland

• Main Author: Guttman, Zachary N
• Format: Dissertation
• Language: English
• Published: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses 01.01.2023
• Subjects: Archaeology; Environmental science; Soil sciences
• ISBN: 9798381377149

Hof and Hólar are adjacent farms in Hjaltadalur, North Iceland settled during the Viking Age. While Hof is mentioned prominently in the saga literature, its importance fades. Conversely, Hólar becomes the most powerful farm in North Iceland and the seat of the northern bishop after the introduction of Christianity. This thesis sheds some light on this apparent shift in power by assessing how social and environmental factors may have influenced the relationship between the two sites. Using a program of soil coring and targeted excavation, as well as a novel environmental sampling procedure, this study assesses if environmental factors such as landslides or erosion could have caused Hof’s decline and abandonment. The results revealed four occupational phases at Hof (pre-1000, 1000-1104, 1104-1300, post-1300) encompassing three shifts in location. Hof declined in size across these occupational phases and was abandoned twice, the longest abandonment occurring between 1300 and the mid-16th century. Given the timing of this abandonment around 1300, a lack of evidence for environmental degradation in the core farmstead area and homefield, and comparative examples of environmental resilience from other farms in Hjaltadalur, it is suggested that social factors associated with the neighboring bishopric were responsible. Hof’s abandonment was therefore a consequence rather than a cause of Hólar’s rise. Dates from excavations at Hólar facilitated a comparison between neighboring sites, suggesting that Hof and Hólar existed as contemporaneous neighboring farms from an early date until Hof’s initial abandonment. Furthermore, the evidence of a Christian cemetery at Hof suggests that the farms were independent, at least for part of this time, and that Hof carried on as an important farmstead even while it was declining. Hof’s decline and abandonment contrasts with Hólar, which, as a farm and institution, became more powerful over time. It is therefore suggested that Hof’s overall decline was broadly related to the rise of the bishopric. Abandonment may have been the final extension of this apparent shift in power, partially enabled by large scale political transformations. By relating Hof’s settlement trajectory to that of Hólar, the results provide a case study on the local exploitative dynamics that may have accompanied Holar’s consolidation, and by extension, the institutionalization of inequality in northern Iceland. It seems that Hólar’s rise to becoming the dominant site in northern Iceland was a slow process enacted at multiple scales, from the national to the local.