Early Settlement History of Iceland

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Early Settlement History of Iceland
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Naddoddr

• According to the Landnámabók (Book of Settlement)
  Naddoddr was a Viking who was the first person to
  touch land in Iceland around 825 A.D.
• He named the country Snæland (Land of Snow)

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Iceland Voyages(9th Century A.D.)
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• Gardar Svavarsson was the first to make it
  through a winter
• He reached Iceland due to a storm that blew his
  ship off course in 860 A.D.
• He was also the first person to confirm that
  Iceland was an island

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Hrafna-Flóki

• Another Norseman who traveled with three ravens
  (Hrafna) to help lead him to Iceland
• Also made it through the winter, but lost all his
  cattle
• Vatnsfjordur
• Borgarfjordur
• He named Iceland (ísland)

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Ingólfur Arnarson

• A Norseman who had instigated a blood feud in
  Norway
• He and his adopted brother Hjörleifur set out to
  explore Iceland
• They made it through a winter and returned the
  following year with other settlers
• Built a farmstead in Reykjavík

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Archaeology

• Landnámabók and Sagas as guides to sites
• However, these sources left out many settlement
  areas including the Mývatn region (Mývatnssveit)
  in the northeast, which features a farm at
  Sveigakot and an iron-smelting site and farm at
  Hrísheimar (Edvardsson, 2003)

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Early life

• Encountered birch woodlands (Smith, 1994
  Vésteinsson, 1998, 2000)
• Most early settlers farmed in wetland areas that
  did not require clearing
• Areas prone to glacial flooding would allow for
  easy movement into the inland areas
• Egalitarian farm distributions

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Resource Depletion

• Needed plants/trees for building materials,
  grazing, fuel (domestic and iron-smelting), farm
  land
• Birch pollen greatly declines between 871 CE and
  920 CE tephra layers
• 1200 CE lack of fuel availability halted
  iron-smelting at Hrísheimar
• Many sites abandoned due to erosion issues
  (Sveigakot)

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Food

• Domesticated cattle, wild fish and birds, arctic
  fox, porpoise, seal and whale (McGovern et al.
  2006)
• Must have used internal trade for sea resources
  (caught and processed elsewhere and brought
  inland)
• High presence of eggs (versus hunting birds)
  suggests some management practices

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Domesticated Animals

• Goats, sheep, pigs, horses and cattle
• Later in the records sheep take over and cattle
  decline while pigs and goats virtually drop out
• This may be due to less available grazing land or
  attempts to control erosion problems

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Environmental Effects

• Now 73 of Iceland suffers from erosion issues
  (Arnalds et al., 2001, cited in Simpson et al.,
  2004)
• Overgrazing prevented forest regeneration
• Volcanic nature of soils makes them particularly
  susceptible to erosion
• Although seasonal grazing was practiced at sites
  such as Sveigakot winter grazing seems to have
  gone unchecked

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Environmental Effects

• Some farms in southern Iceland show evidence of
  land management practices that have maintained
  soil quality to present day.
• It has also been suggested that some farms just
  had a string of bad seasons and that climate
  affected grazing seasons
• Larger farms with greater resource access and
  knowledge of previous farm failures had a greater
  chance of survival
• Volcanic activity, glacial flooding and climate
  changes should also be recognized as contributing
  factors

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