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PATTERNS OF SETTLEMENT IN ICELAND:
A STUDY IN PREHISTORY
BY ORRI VÉSTEINSSON
FOR THE BETTER PART OF THIS CENTURY the settlement of
Iceland, the landnám, has received surprisingly limited attention
from scholars, considering its significance for our understanding of the
Viking Age and Icelandic history.1
The reason for this is clear enough. When it began to be realised, by
the middle of the century, that the Book of Settlements and the Sagas
of Icelanders could not be used as accurate descriptions of persons and
events in the ninth, tenth and eleventh centuries, this period, which
previously had been full of exciting history, was suddenly plunged into
an impenetrable darkness.2
The retreat was sounded by Björn Þorsteinsson (1953) and Jón
Jóhannesson (1956) who laid the foundations of the modern view of
the history of medieval Iceland in the 1950s. Both attempted to build
a general picture of developments based on Ari fróði’s Book of Iceland-
ers and to some extent on what each considered could plausibly be
extracted from the Sagas. This left little more than an approximate date
for the beginning of the landnám and an outline of constitutional
developments garnished with the limited information provided by Ari
on the early development of the Church in the eleventh century (Íslenzk
fornrit I, 3–28). There was, as a result, too little meat left on the bones
for there to be much opportunity for historical inquiry and for the past
two generations of Icelandic historians the period before 1100 has
been, to all intents and purposes, pre-historical, with a historical period
beginning only with events described in the contemporary sagas of the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It is also fair to say that the anthropo-
logical approach to the interpretation of the Sagas has only contributed
to this inattention to the early period, allowing as it does for an
atemporal view of the society of the Sagas, a society which belongs no
1 This article is based on a paper given to the Viking Society in London,
7 March 1997, under the title ‘New approaches to the Settlement of Iceland.’
2 Melsteð 1903–30 is the last serious historical work making use of the Sagas
as sources for actual events.
2Saga-Book
more to the tenth century than it does to the thirteenth (e. g. Sørensen
1977, 1993; Miller 1990).
It has therefore been left to a handful of archaeologists to worry
about the settlement of Iceland, but while considerable work has been
done in this field in the last fifty years, and we have now far more data
to play with, it has not resulted in a significantly greater understanding
of developments in Iceland in the ninth, tenth and eleventh centuries.3
The reason for this is that until quite recently Icelandic archaeologists
have, by and large, considered their task to be to retrieve objects and
structures to illustrate studies of the texts and they have treated their
results as capable of only very limited observations about the past
(Eldjárn 1966, also Adolf Friðriksson 1994a, 1994b). In addition the
principal issues that have occupied archaeologists, the dating of the
landnám and the origins of the settlers, have not proved fruitful avenues
of research in as much as nothing has turned up contradicting the long
held view that Iceland was settled by Norsemen around and shortly
after AD 870.
The dating of the landnám
Regarding the dating of the landnám, archaeological investigations
continue to support Ari fróði’s date of 871. In fact it now seems that his
calculation was so accurate that it is almost uncanny. Traditionally, the
evidence provided by archaeology has been based on artifact typology,
in particular the typology of grave goods from pre-Christian burials.
More than 300 such burials are now known in Iceland and a stylistic
analysis of the grave-goods puts them squarely in the tenth century with
only a handful of objects with a late ninth-century date and a single pair
of brooches with an early or mid ninth-century date (Eldjárn 1956,
297–98, 394–96). While artifact typology cannot provide accurate
dating for the landnám the sheer mass of this evidence makes all
suggestions of an earlier landnám very implausible. Much stronger and
more accurate evidence is provided by tephrochronology, the dating of
geological and occupational deposits through the study of volcanic ash,
or tephra. When volcanoes erupt they often emit large quantities of ash
3 The exceptions come mainly from the natural sciences, where pollen analy-
ses have produced a more detailed picture of the changes in vegetation follow-
ing the landnám (Þorleifur Einarsson 1962; Margrét Hallsdóttir 1982, 1984,
1987; see also articles in Guðrún Ása Grímsdóttir 1996) and analyses of fauna
remains in early archaeological deposits have contributed to a better under-
standing of diet and farming practices (Amorosi 1989; McGovern et al. 1988).
Patterns of Settlement in Iceland 3
which can be carried by winds over large areas. When the tephra sets,
it forms a blanket which can be used as a chronological marker. The
mapping of different tephra layers provides a relative chronology but
when individual eruptions, or tephra layers associated with them, can
be given a date, such layers become markers for absolute dates (Sigurður
Þórarinsson 1944). For late medieval and modern times contemporary
documentation provides accurate dates for many of the major tephra
layers, but for the period before 1100 no such aids are available, and the
dating of the tephra layers has to a large extent been dependent upon
radiocarbon analyses. In the context of the settlement of Iceland, the
dating of a tephra layer normally called the Landnám-tephra is of
crucial importance. The Landnám-tephra is found all over Iceland
except in the far West and Northwest and is commonly observed
directly beneath the earliest indications of human habitation at early
archaeological sites. A large number of radiocarbon analyses from
early archaeological deposits associated with this tephra have given
very early dates, back to the seventh and eighth centuries even.4 Need-
less to say this has resulted in considerable confusion and speculation
about the possibility of a much earlier settlement date than the tradi-
tional late ninth-century one. The majority of scholars have, however,
remained sceptical of these radiocarbon results and several factors have
been suggested which could cause a systematic error in radiocarbon
dates from Iceland (Vilhjálmur Ö. Vilhjálmsson 1990; Páll Theodórsson
1993). While this remains to be proved, a much more reliable and
accurate method for dating the Landnám-tephra has been developed.
This comes from the study of ice-cores from the Greenland ice cap. An
annual cycle of freezing and thawing leaves horizons in the ice-cap
which can be counted in a similar way to tree-rings. Recently traces of
the Landnám-tephra have been found in the ice-cap and this produces
the date 871, with a margin of error of less than two years, for the
deposition of the Landnám-tephra (Grönvold et al. 1995). There can as
a result be no doubt any more regarding the date of the Landnám-tephra
and any claim for human habitation in Iceland predating 871 must
therefore be based on finding actual human deposits underneath this
layer. Claims for traces of human activity beneath the Landnám-tephra
have been made for at least three sites, all in southern Iceland. The
4 Particularly from the early settlement sites in Reykjavík (Nordahl 1988, 32,
39, 55, 57, 62–63, 83, 113–14) and in Herjólfsdalur (Margrét Hermanns-
Auðardóttir 1989, 45–54). See also Vilhjálmur Ö. Vilhjálmsson 1991.
4Saga-Book
claim for Reykjavík has recently been refuted in the light of further
excavation in the long-house in question (Einarsson 1995) and the
claims for Herjólfsdalur in the Westmann Islands off the south coast
and for Bessastaðir just outside Reykjavík are as yet lacking proper
documentation and cannot be verified. More significant is the by now
substantial body of evidence for human occupation just above the
Landnám-tephra, that is from soon after 871. At almost every medieval
site which has been investigated, both coastal and inland, and in all
parts of the country where the Landnám-tephra can be found, there are
signs of building activity just above the layer. This strongly suggests
that not only did the settlement of Iceland commence shortly after 871
but that the process was a rapid one with some sort of human occupa-
tion established in all inhabitable regions of the country by some point
in the first half of the tenth century.
The origins of the settlers
Regarding the origins of the settlers, no traces of any Irish presence
have been uncovered in the archaeological record, despite quite a
considerable effort to locate them (Eldjárn 1989), and the whole ‘Irish
question’ is still unanswered and likely to remain so (Gísli Sigurðsson
1988; Jakobsen 1988). While there can be no good reason to distrust the
accounts of Dicuil and Ari fróði, in particular because the two can
hardly be connected, the fact that no traces of hermits in the eighth and
ninth centuries have been found suggests that their presence was very
limited and sporadic, possibly only seasonal as described by Dicuil,
and that it had no discernible impact on the Norse settlements. Celtic
elements, most notable in place-names (Hermann Pálsson 1965), are
quite reasonably ascribed to contacts between the Norse and the Celtic
peoples of Ireland and Scotland made prior to the settlement of Iceland.
Evidence for continued contacts is surprisingly rare, which suggests
that while a significant proportion of the settlers of Iceland may have
come via the British Isles, their descendants looked to Scandinavia and
the wholly Scandinavian colonies, Orkney in particular, for trade and
cultural and political contacts.
For quite some time it also seemed reasonable to pinpoint a specific
region in Scandinavia as the place of origin of the Icelandic settlers.
West and Southwest Norway has always been the favourite, but this is
based more on the Book of Settlements than any sound archaeological
evidence (Roussell 1943, 194; Hörður Ágústsson 1982, 255). Recently
Northern Norway has also been named, but this also is not supported
Patterns of Settlement in Iceland 5
by any archaeological evidence (Einarsson 1994, 17–39, 107–19, 139–40).
In general it is safe to say that most scholars shy away from specula-
tions concerning the precise origins of the settlers of Iceland.
How was Iceland settled?
It turns out then that what was known with reasonable certainty half a
century ago is now known with more reasonable certainty, but the
considerable work which has been put into obtaining these results has
not turned up any new research questions or new aspects of the settle-
ment process for further study. This is a big problem, not only because
knowledge of early Icelandic society will continue to be incomplete as
long as new subjects for research are not identified, but also because
expensive excavations will fail to record vital information if the con-
texts in which this information may be meaningful are not known to the
excavator. As long as this is allowed to happen it is not likely that new
data will emerge which can significantly increase our understanding of
the settlement and early society in Iceland.
Although the lack of raw data is the principal reason for the lack of
interest in the landnám, it is not the only reason. There are data-sets
available, the grave goods in particular, which can clearly be made to
answer a series of important questions, but have not been subjected to
analysis or discussion. It is therefore a lack of ideas, as much as lack of
data, which has held back research into the landnám.
Instead of the question of when and where from, the aspect of the
landnám most in need of study is how. While we can be fairly certain
when Iceland was settled, we can only hope to understand where the
settlers came from and, possibly more importantly, why they came, if
we can appreciate how they went about colonising the country and
what sort of society they built for themselves in the tenth century.
Research into this aspect of the landnám also has the potential to
increase our understanding and appreciation of the Sagas.
The following discussion represents a collection of observations
made in preparation for a research project about land use and territorial
division in medieval Iceland.5 The sources used are on the one hand the
landscape itself, the vegetation and indications about vegetation change,
and on the other late medieval and early modern records relating to land
use and patterns of land-ownership. The documentary evidence can at
5 Institute of Archaeology, Iceland, Landnýting og landamerki á Íslandi á
miðöldum.
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best be stretched back to the twelfth century, but it only becomes
abundant in the fourteenth. By studying patterns of land use and the
division of the land into farming units in the fourteenth century the aim
is to extrapolate backwards into the landnám period on the basis that
these late medieval patterns must ultimately derive from choices made
at the beginning of the landnám. In this context the reconstruction of
boundaries between farms is vital because it is often the only way to
understand the relationship between major and minor farms and to
differentiate between primary and secondary settlements. Maps of
farm-boundaries are not available for Iceland and the investigation has
therefore been limited to areas where fieldwork has been carried out
allowing modern boundaries to be compared with medieval ones. The
regions used as examples here are Eyjafjörður in the north, a very
densely populated region with good hay-fields and rich meadows but
restricted access to summer grazing for sheep, and Borgarfjörður in the
south-west, an area of more varied conditions, with farms ranging from
huge lowland estates to small inland cottages. This is not an ideal
choice, in particular because these regions have only limited access to
the sea, and it is therefore not possible at this stage to relate these
observations to those important parts of the country like the north-west
and far east where the economy was based on marine resources as much
as on animal husbandry.
The basic aim is to get an idea of social stratification by looking at
differential access to resources and to identify issues in this context
which can be debated fruitfully on the basis of archaeological and
environmental data.
Where did people settle?
The first issue that needs to be discussed is the location of the first
settlements. That is, in what sort of environment did the first settlers
choose to place their farms and to what extent was this significant for
later developments? The obvious place to start looking for answers to
this question is in restraints imposed by the environment and by the
economic practices of the settlers.
Ari fróði’s claim that the whole country between the shore and the
mountainsides was covered in woods when the first settlers arrived is
well known (‘Í þann tíð vas Ísland viði vaxit á miðli fjalls ok fjoru’,
Íslenzk fornrit I, 5). It is also supported by pollen analyses which show
that birch dominated the Icelandic vegetation prior to the landnám but
declined rapidly in its aftermath. Birch will grow virtually anywhere
8Saga-Book
spring flooding. Several species of grass and sedge, which are nutri-
tious enough to keep cows alive and milking, thrive in such conditions.
As wetlands of this sort are also the type of area least likely to be
covered in woods, it is reasonable to assume that it was precisely in
these conditions that the earliest farms were established. Flooded wetlands
occur most commonly close to or on the coast in the estuaries of large
rivers. Large rivers not only often provide excellent harbours, and we
know that many of them were used as such in the Middle Ages, but they
are also the easiest route along which to explore the country. Following
this line of reasoning, we should expect to find the very earliest settle-
ments in or near estuaries of large rivers and other early settlements in
a string along the river as far inland as any wetland is associated with
it (see Fig. 1, Land types in Borgarfjörður, opposite). The type of
settlement this applies to is one which is likely to have become perma-
nent and to have dominated later stages of the settlement process when
it came to large-scale forest clearing and the occupation of less favour-
able land. Access to flooded wetlands was a valued resource in the late
Middle Ages and a high proportion of the major estates based their
economy partly on flooded meadows. It is quite reasonable to assume
that many of these major estates owed their extensive landholdings and
access to diverse and valuable resources to the fact that they were the
first settlements in their respective areas. This is supported to some
degree by the place-name evidence. It has long since been pointed out
that among the largest farms in the country, farms which had churches
on them and came to be centres of parishes, names describing natural
features are much more common than among less important farms, and
conversely that the place-name ending -staðir, the most common in
Iceland, is relatively rare for the major estates (Olsen 1926, 63–76;
Vigfús Guðmundsson 1926; also Þórhallur Vilmundarson 1971; Svavar
Sigmundsson 1992, 133–37). While the majority of the place-names
describing natural features, names like Hólar (Hills), Höfði (Head-
land), Nes (Peninsula), add little to our knowledge of the environment
at the time of the landnám, a fair number refer to the vegetation.
Among these, there are many that refer to wetlands, and names like
Saurbær, Keldur, Mýri, Seyla and Fitjar are common on major church
farms. As a group of names on major estates they are rivalled only by
names indicating dry grassland, like Vellir, Grund and possibly Eyri.
This latter group of names may point to clearings in the woodlands that
were already there when the first settlers arrived, but this is much more
difficult to verify than the existence of the woodless wetlands. In many
Patterns of Settlement in Iceland 7
and it is believed that much of the country as high up as 400 metres
above sea level was covered in birch forest at the time of the landnám
(Margrét Hallsdóttir 1996; Þóra Ellen Þórhallsdóttir 1996). That is, all
the inhabitable areas of the country were covered in wood when the
first settlers arrived. The conditions least favourable for birch are very
wet bogs and estuaries where flooding occurs periodically, and very
sandy and gravelly soils such as are commonly found on beaches and
at the outlets of smaller rivers. It is natural to expect that the first
settlers sought out clearings of this sort to build their farms in. Not only
were they thus spared having to clear the forest for the time being but
it is questionable if forest clearance would have solved any of the
problems facing the settlers in their first years. The forest was a re-
source in itself, both as pasture for sheep, cattle and pigs and as a
source of firewood, charcoal and even construction timber. A more
immediate problem than the need for open spaces will have been the
need for winter fodder, for the cows in particular. Sheep, horses, pigs
and calves can be grazed almost the whole year round in southern
Iceland and need little extra fodder to help get them through the winter.
Furthermore that fodder need not be of high quality; dried leaves from
the forest would suffice. Cows on the other hand need to be kept
indoors for a long period over the winter months and they need good
quality fodder, especially if they are expected to produce milk. Dairy
products were a central part of the Icelandic economy in the later
Middle Ages and it is reasonable to expect that they had been so from
the beginning. This is to some extent supported by the fact that very
early sites like Herjólfsdalur in the Westmann Islands and Granastaðir
in Eyjafjörður have produced a much higher number of cattle bones,
relative to sheep bones, than later medieval sites (Amorosi and McGovern
1994). Large byres are also commonly found at early sites—examples
are Herjólfsdalur, Hvítárholt and Papey—which indicates the impor-
tance attached to dairy products. In late medieval times and to the
present day, hay as fodder for milch-cows has been produced on im-
proved hay fields surrounding each farm. Little is known about the
formation of these fields but the indications are that it must have been
a slow process and that the early settlers would not have been able to
prepare such fields and expect them to produce hay of markedly better
quality than ordinary meadows for the first years of the landnám,
possibly not even for the first generation. The only alternative to hay
from improved fields, as fodder for milch-cows, is hay from meadows
which are permanently or periodically submerged by water, usually in
Patterns of Settlement in Iceland 9
Fig. 1. Land types in Borgarfjörður. The map showes five districts (hreppar)
south of the river Hvítá. Source: Orri Vésteinsson 1996b.
10 Saga-Book
cases it can be shown, however, that farms with such names are situated
close to flooded wetlands, where the dry grassland may have formed a
belt between the wetlands and the woods. Such conditions would
presumably have been ideal for building a farm and may be the reason
behind the later importance of major estates like Grund in Eyjafjörður,
Möðruvellir in Hörgárdalur and Vellir in Svarfaðardalur.
It is perfectly possible that there were in the early stages of the
settlement process different kinds of settlements which would have
relied primarily on hunting, subsidised with light animal husbandry.
There are places in Iceland where small populations could be sustained
by hunting and fishing the whole year round. These are primarily
islands off the coast like the Westmann Islands and the numerous
islands in Breiðafjörður, where there is ready access to a variety of
marine resources both in winter and summer. The large and well built
byres at Herjólfsdalur in the Westmann Islands speak, however, against
such a suggestion, and indicate that even where it was possible to rely
on hunting as the main source of nutrition people chose to base their
livelihood primarily on animal husbandry. It is possible that the first
settlers began seeking out areas where animal husbandry could easily
be subsidised by hunting and fishing, that they settled first on the coast
and on off-shore islands and that when people began to search for
places to settle inland they sought out rivers and lakes where fish could
be caught throughout the winter. This could explain the very early
settlement at Hofstaðir near Mývatn, which was occupied in a matter of
years after the Landnám-tephra was deposited (Adolf Friðriksson and
Orri Vésteinsson 1995). While the Mývatn area is far from ideal cattle
country, it has good sheep grazing all year round, uniquely for its
altitude and the north of Iceland in general, and the lake is rich in trout
and bird-life. A midden currently under excavation at Hofstaðir has
turned up all the normal domesticated mammals, sheep, cattle, horse
and pig, but also large quantities of trout, bird bones and egg-shell
fragments (McGovern et al. 1996) . This is suggestive of an economy
based on animal husbandry but heavily subsidised by the local wildlife.
Interestingly, bones from salt-water fish have also been recovered from
this midden, and this is also the case with another early inland site in
the north, Granastaðir in Eyjafjörður. This reminds us that people were
capable of acquiring resources over very long distances, as Hofstaðir is
more than 40 kilometres inland and Granastaðir little less, and this may
also suggest that the inhabitants of these farms had a preference for marine
foods, possibly because they originally came from a marine environment.
Patterns of Settlement in Iceland 11
It will probably always be difficult to provide archaeological evi-
dence for the different ages of the earliest settlements. It is notoriously
difficult to estimate the time elapsed between the deposition of the
Landnám-tephra and the first signs of building activity at a site. It is a
greater problem, however, that the majority of early settlement sites
which have been investigated are unsuccessful ones, that is, sites that
were abandoned within decades of the original occupation. This is of
course not surprising; one would expect a period of trial and error at the
very beginning of the colonisation of an uninhabited country. An
example of this is the site of Grelutóttir in Arnarfjörður in the north-
west (see Fig. 2, Plan of Grelutóttir, below). The small long-house on
this site was situated close to the beach by the outlet of a stream. It is
likely that when the builders of this house settled here this shore-line
was the only area not covered in birch forest. They therefore built their
first dwelling near the beach but one or two generations later they
moved it, presumably to the site of the farm Eyri which later became an
important church-farm. The relocation of the farm was probably occasioned
Fig. 2. Plan of Grelutóttir in Arnarfjörður. A tenth-century farmhouse with an
adjacent pit-house (bottom of picture). Source: Guðmundur Ólafsson 1980, 32–33.
12 Saga-Book
by the effects of forest clearance. The clearing of the forest made better
farmland available higher up on the slopes, but it may also have caused
instability in the soils in the overhanging mountainside, resulting in
floods in the stream by which the original farm had been built; the site
was covered with rubble from such floods (Guðmundur Ólafsson 1980).
Such relocations of farms over short distances seem to have been
common (several traditions to this effect are recorded in the Book of
Settlements) but they will not have greatly altered the resource strate-
gies or the land claims of the farmers in question.
The social organisation of the settlers
Another issue that needs to be addressed is the composition of the
groups of people that came to settle in Iceland. It has always been
assumed that each settlement consisted of a single family with rela-
tives, servants and slaves and opinions have differed only as to the
number and significance of the slaves. The Book of Settlements and the
Sagas of Icelanders seem always to envisage that even if people sailed
to Iceland in large groups of several families, each family would then
establish its own farmstead with little or no economic or political links
with the others. This of course is entirely in accordance with the general
view of medieval Icelandic society that it consisted of isolated farm-
steads controlled by independent farmers. It can, however, be reason-
ably suggested that this is an erroneous view and that the basis for it
goes no further back than the nineteenth century when Icelandic farm-
ers saw themselves exactly so, isolated and independent, and that the
sagas can be read very differently. That would, however, require a
discussion of the sagas which will not be attempted here. Instead it
must suffice here to analyse the archaeological evidence, and this
suggests that the earliest settlers sailed to Iceland in large groups of
more than one family and that initially at least they stayed together.
This is suggested most clearly by the site of Herjólfsdalur in the
Westmann Islands off the south coast of Iceland (see Fig 3, Plan of
Herjólfsdalur, opposite). It is one of the most complete early settlement
sites excavated to date. This site has two long-houses with long-fires
and raised benches along the sides, each accompanied by a byre with
room for more than ten cows in each. In addition there are two smaller
houses which were interpreted by the excavator as human dwellings on
account of the cooking pits found in both, but it is of course not
possible to see if these houses were occupied by different people from
the inhabitants of the long-houses or if they had some specialised
Patterns of Settlement in Iceland 13
Fig. 3. Plan of Herjólfsdalur in the Westmann Islands, off the south coast of
Iceland. II and V are the long-houses (upper right-hand corner and lower left-
hand corner respectively), each with an associated byre (VIII and IV). In one
of the byres (VIII) there is a cooking pit indicating that it may also have been
used for human habitation. Houses I and III have cooking pits and may have
been used for habitation in addition to the long-houses. Source: Margrét-
Hermanns-Auðardóttir 1989.
II
VIII
III
VI
IV
V
I
(IX)
VII
14 Saga-Book
function, for instance in food preparation and storage. Furthermore, the
inner half of one of the byres showed signs of human habitation
(Margrét Hermanns-Auðardóttir 1989, 108–11). This is by no means
the only early settlement site with more than one long-house. At Hvítár-
holt in Árnesþing three large long-houses were excavated along with
five small pit-houses (Þór Magnússon 1973; see Fig 4, Plan of Hvítárholt,
opposite, top). In Reykjavík the urban excavation found traces of two
small long-houses side by side and a third larger one which was
considered to be more recent (Nordahl 1988). At Bessastaðir south-
west of Reykjavík an ongoing excavation has so far uncovered the
remains of two long-houses (Sigurður Bergsteinsson, personal commu-
nication). At Goðatættur in Papey off the east coast a long-house with
an accompanying byre with a habitation area was uncovered, remark-
ably similar to the set-up in Herjólfsdalur (Eldjárn 1989, 128–57). At
Granastaðir there is an unexcavated house besides the one uncovered
(see Fig 5, Plan of Granastaðir, opposite, bottom). A test trench led the
excavator to suggest that this house was a byre, but judging from the
section he has produced it could just as well be a long-house. At
Granastaðir there is also a large pit-house which was clearly inhabited
by humans (Einarsson 1994, 75–79, 92–94). In fact there is only a
single early settlement site, that of Grelutóttir in Arnarfjörður discussed
on pp. 11–12 above, that seems to consist of only a single long-house,
though that house was in fact accompanied by two small pit-houses. All
other early settlement sites have been investigated too incompletely for
it to be safe to assume anything about the number of buildings at each site.
Excavations of late-medieval sites always turn up a single long-
house, usually with adjacent rooms, suggesting a single household,
presumably a nuclear family with relatives and servants. This and the
ideas mentioned earlier on isolation and independence have led all the
excavators of the early settlement sites with more than one long-house
to suggest that the long-houses were not occupied contemporaneously,
but that when one building was abandoned or fell into ruin another was
built beside it. There is, however, nothing to suggest this in the stratigraphy
of any of these sites and this is not the way in which people rebuilt their
houses in later centuries. Excavations of Icelandic farm-mounds have
shown that people normally rebuilt their houses on top of the earlier
ones, often preserving both the shape and size of the earlier building.
In fact, complete rebuilding was very rare; houses were repaired and
rebuilt piecemeal for centuries on end, ensuring that the farmhouses
occupied the same limited patch while accumulating into high mounds
Patterns of Settlement in Iceland 15
Fig. 4. Plan of Hvítárholt in Árnessýsla, S-Iceland. Nos III, VI, VIII and IX are
long-houses, II is thought to have been a barn and the smaller buildings are pit-
houses. Source: Þór Magnússon 1973, 11.
Fig. 5. Plan of Granastaðir in Eyjafjörður, N-Iceland. No. 3 is a pit-house
which is believed to have been a dwelling, 9 is the long-house and 16 is a
partially excavated building which the excavator suggested was a byre but
which may equally plausibly be suggested to be a second long-house. Source:
Einarsson 1994, 75.
16 Saga-Book
of discarded building material and refuse (Mjöll Snæsdóttir 1991).6 It
is difficult to see why this pattern should not have been followed in the
settlement period, especially as farm mounds are well known in both
Norway and Orkney from the period prior to the Icelandic landnám as
well as in later times (Bertelsen and Urbanczyk 1989). In the absence
of any stratigraphic proof to the contrary, therefore, it is much more
reasonable to believe that these early sites were occupied by more than
one household at the same time.7
It is easy to see why this might have been preferable at the initial
stages of the landnám. The first years in a new and unknown country
will have been difficult for any group and there must have been obvious
advantages in co-operating in the reconnaissance and initial clearing of
the country. We may in this context be reminded of the three long-
houses at L’Anse-aux-Meadows, a pioneer site if ever there was one.
The abandonment of sites like Herjólfsdalur and Hvítárholt might
suggest that once this initial stage of settlement was over, the ways of
individual households parted and each household chose a new site
some distance from the others. In these cases the original site was then
abandoned completely, while at sites like Bessastaðir and Reykjavík a
single household remained on the original site while others presumably
moved away. This sort of scenario would be based on the presupposi-
tion that people either preferred to live in single households and ab-
horred the company of others or that the economy somehow dictated
that the same site could not in the long run sustain more than a single
household. This line of reasoning could prove treacherous, especially
when it is considered that in late medieval and early modern times it
was quite common for more than one household to share the same site
and the same home field. In some cases these were independent house-
holds forming small hamlets, a pattern especially common in the coastal
areas of the southern plains. Much more frequently, groups of house-
holds were made up of a single independent household, normally of
high status, and a number of dependent and usually much smaller
households on the same site or close by. Such groups of households
often made up the core of the late medieval estates and suggest that it
was advantageous for the running of large farming units to have more
than one household working together. From looking at the two long-
6 Compare also the farm mound at Bergþórshvoll where deposits are found all
the way back to the tenth century (Eldjárn and Gísli Gestsson 1952).
7 I am indebted to Mjöll Snæsdóttir for this interpretation of the early sites.
Patterns of Settlement in Iceland 17
houses at Herjólfsdalur it is not apparent that one household was of
higher status than the other; the slightly smaller long-house has for
instance a much larger byre attached to it. Much the same picture
emerges at Hvítárholt; no one long-house is significantly larger than
the others. In these two cases it seems therefore that the households
occupying the sites were of equal status.
The proximity of households at these early sites must surely imply
economic co-operation, and if we also accept that the earliest and most
successful settlements were those in the wetland regions, those which
later appear as great estates with multiple households, it becomes
reasonable to suggest that the people who sailed to Iceland settled
together in groups of two or more households and that this pattern
formed the basis for the Icelandic economy for centuries to come.
Estates and church lands
There is relatively abundant documentation on the great estates from
late medieval times, as each normally had a church with a priest on it
and the churches often owned parts of the estates. This property was
listed in charters drawn up for each church and these give a comprehen-
sive overview of the distribution of church lands among the great
estates by the beginning of the fourteenth century. The indications are,
however, that most of the major churches were endowed with most of
their landed property back in the twelfth century (Orri Vésteinsson
1996a, 145–46, 151–73).
Churches could own land in several different ways, but those that
concern us here are four (see Fig. 6, Churches and church lands in
Borgarfjörður, overleaf). Firstly, a church could own a cottage on the
estate where it was situated. Such cottages did not normally have
defined boundaries and only a fixed proportion of the home field,
meadows and pasture of the estate belonged to them. An example of
this is the church at Hvanneyri which owned a single cottage situated
in the home field of the main farm (DI I, 592). Secondly, a church could
own one or more outlying properties, that is, cottages or small farms
which were considered a part of the whole but were situated on the
periphery of the farmland. An example of this is the church at Bær,
which in the late twelfth century was endowed with three cottages,
called ‘útlönd’, around the farmland proper (Biskupa sögur I, 284–87;
DI V, 401–02). In this case the evidence gives an indication of the
extent of the lands originally belonging to the estate. Thirdly, a church
could own a fixed proportion of the whole estate, usually a third or a
18 Saga-Book
Fig. 6. Churches and church lands in Borgarfjörður. The map showes five
districts (hreppar) south of the river Hvítá. Source: Orri Vésteinsson 1996b.
defined
Patterns of Settlement in Iceland 19
half. The charters often list all the farms and cottages which belonged
to the church in this way and this can give an idea of the extent of the ori-
ginal estate. An example of this is the church at Fitjar which owned a
third of the land it was situated on. It is clear from the charters that this
included the farm Vatnshorn which Laxdæla saga would have us believe
was the core holding of the estate (DI III, 124; IV, 119; Íslenzk fornrit
V, 184). Fourthly, a church could own the whole estate. An example of
this is Reykholt which already by the late twelfth century owned not only
the land of Reykholt itself but also a number of smaller farms immedi-
ately adjacent to it (DI I, 279–80, 350–51). The boundaries of these
suggest that this compact chunk of land formed the original estate.
If we compare this information with the boundary map, a distinct
pattern emerges. Firstly, the estates themselves always occupy the best
land in their respective areas and they also have the widest range of
access to different resources. They tend to have direct access to upland
pastures and if not, then they own defined pieces of uplands for summer
grazing. They also tend to own forests and fishing rights and have more
than one shieling. These holdings are not always concentrated in one
area and the manpower needed to make use of the scattered holdings
must have been considerable, a fact often commented upon by early
modern priests who did not have the resources to make use of all the
property belonging to their churches (e. g. Jarðabók Árna Magnússonar
og Páls Vídalíns IV, 231). Secondly, the estates tend to be made up of
two or three different types of holding: there is the main farm itself (it
might even be called the manor), and there is a small and often fluctuating
number of cottages in or around the home field of the manor. These did
not have defined boundaries and sometimes not even defined areas of
activity. Their inhabitants were economically and politically dependent
on the estate owner and it is likely that the cottagers could easily have
been called upon when the estate needed extra manpower and that this
was their main usefulness to the owner. Thirdly, we often find a number
of quite small but independent holdings on the periphery of estates.
Holdings of this type were only independent in the sense that they
could be bought and sold irrespective of the ownership of the estate.
Their often quite limited access to resources and the poor quality of the
land ensured that their farmers were both politically and economically
dependent on the landowners and/or their powerful neighbours. It is
possible that these peripheral holdings were originally shielings or
some form of out-stations from the main farm which later developed
20 Saga-Book
into independent farming units and may therefore represent a relatively
late stage in the settlement process.
Immediately surrounding the large estates it is common to find medium
sized or large single farms with a respectable access to resources (see
Fig. 7, Andakíll and Bæjarsveit, below). This type of holding tends to
occupy good quality land in regard to hay-making and pasture but may
lack access to important resources like fish or peat or fire-wood. It is
reasonable to suggest that this sort of holding represents latecomers
among the settlers arriving from abroad. Possibly they were able to
seize good quality land in between the already large estates because the
estate farmers could not make any reasonable claim to such lands on
account of a lack of manpower.
A secondary phase of settlement
The large estates occupy a significant, but nevertheless small, part of
the inhabitable area of Iceland. The rest of this area is dominated by
coastal and valley environments where farms are by and large medium
or small in size and have all more or less similar access to resources.
This is the sort of landscape which was covered in thick forest when the
first settlers arrived and was initially not as ideally suited for settlement
Fig. 7. Andakíll and Bæjarsveit in Borgarfjörður (part of larger area shown in
Figures 1 and 6). Source: Orri Vésteinsson 1996b.
Patterns of Settlement in Iceland 21
as the wetland areas. It is striking that in both Borgarfjörður and
Eyjafjörður there is a large number of farms in areas of this kind which
are almost exactly identical in size and shape and all have somewhat
limited access to resources. In both regions farms of this type tend not
to have enough land attached to them to have a shieling and many also
lack access to peat or fire-wood (see Fig 8, Planned settlements in the
parish of Hrafnagil in Eyjafjörður, overleaf). It is unlikely that any
farmer would have occupied the land in this way if he had had a choice
in the matter, and this pattern of landholding must surely suggest
planned settlements. This is probably what one of the authors of the
Book of Settlements had in mind when he said of the settler Blund-
Ketill that he was a very wealthy man and that he had forests cleared
in many places and established farms in the clearings (‘Blund-Ketill
var maðr stórauðigr; hann lét ryðja víða í skógum ok byggja’, Íslenzk
fornrit I, 84). This presupposes that Blund-Ketill had previously laid
claim to the forests he later had cleared and also that this was some-
thing befitting a great and wealthy man. Huge land-claims were well
known to thirteenth-century scholars and whatever the truth behind
individual stories of such claims it is inherently likely that the owners
of great estates somehow tried to control the settlement of those neigh-
bouring lands which they could not make use of. It was for them a
natural precaution to keep these settlements small; nobody likes a rival
in his back garden, but a large number of politically, as well as probably
economically, dependent smallholders can always come in handy. This
must be the reason behind the general pattern of Icelandic settlement
which has the largest units, in terms of land, people and yields, in the
most productive areas and the smallest units on lands least favourable
for agriculture.
It seems, then, that there were two distinct phases in the settlement of
Iceland. First was the establishment of great estates mainly in wetland
areas, and this was followed by a planned settlement of less accessible
areas. But how can we date these processes? One way might be to look
at the distribution of cemeteries in the later Middle Ages. Iceland’s
ecclesiastical landscape was unusual in that chapels and minor churches
were found at every second to third farm in the country and all of them
seem to have had cemeteries attached to them. A chapel cemetery was
normally only used for the household of the farm where the chapel was
situated and this seems to have been the main function of these build-
ings. The simplest explanation for the high number of chapels and
lesser churches in Iceland is that they were the successors to the pre-
22 Saga-Book
Fig. 8. Planned settlements in the parish of Hrafnagil in Eyjafjörður, N-Iceland.
Source: Adolf Friðriksson and Orri Vésteinsson 1994, 1996a, 1996b.
Patterns of Settlement in Iceland 23
Christian grave-fields which were normally situated just outside the
home field of each farm. It seems that following the conversion in the
year 1000 Christian cemeteries were established in different locations
from the pre-Christian grave-fields, but on the same principles, that is,
outside the home field and one for each farm. It follows from this that
farms which have cemeteries or chapels associated with them are likely
to have been established before the conversion, whereas farms without
such a feature were probably only established after that event. This
hypothesis still needs to be tested, but as a rule of thumb it seems to be
useful. If it is applied to the smaller holdings which have been ascribed
here to the second phase of settlement it emerges that this had only just
got under way by the year 1000. Some of the larger farms in these less
favourable areas had chapels, but the majority of such farms did not.
This is in sharp contrast to concentrations of farms with much greater
access to resources as for instance the cluster of church and chapels at
Lundur, Gullberastaðir and Oddastaðir in Lundarreykjadalur. These
three farms form a cluster and to them belong most of the highland
pastures available to the inhabitants of the valley (see Fig. 9, Lundar-
reykjadalur, overleaf). The other farms in the valley are all much
smaller and only two out of nineteen had chapels associated with them.
The conclusion that the second phase of settlement was only partly
under way by the year 1000 may be qualified by the likelihood that
grave-fields were only established for independent farms and that out-
stations of different kinds could have a permanent settlement with all
corpses brought back to the estate grave-field. This means that many of
these settlements may have been long established by the year 1000 but
that they were still being considered a part of some other farming unit,
most likely a wetland estate. The majority of them must have got their
independence in the eleventh century because by the end of that cen-
tury the number of farmers paying assembly tax had reached the figure
it would stay at for much of the Middle Ages and early modern times
(Íslenzk fornrit I, 23; DI IV, 9–10).
Highland settlement
There is an aspect of the settlement which has intrigued many and
needs to be discussed. This is the statement in the Book of Settlements
that some of the settlers preferred to live high in the mountains because
of the abundant pasture available there for sheep (‘Sumir þeir, er fyrstir
kómu út, byggðu næstir fjollum ok merkðu at því landskostina, at kvikféit
fýstisk frá sjónum til fjallanna’, Íslenzk fornrit I, 337). To many this
24 Saga-Book
statement has seemed validated by the high number of early sites high
up in the mountains, many of them further inland than any modern
settlement has ever reached. In actual fact secure tenth-century dates
can be found for only a handful of these sites and for the majority of
them it is impossible to ascertain whether they were shielings or
independent farms (Brynjúlfur Jónsson 1885; Bruun 1898; Eldjárn
1949; Sveinbjörn Rafnsson 1990; Guðrún Sveinbjarnardóttir 1992). In
fact, only three sites are known from such highland areas which can
with certainty be identified as tenth-century farms. Two of these are in
Þórsmörk8 and one in Bárðardalur.9 Both these areas have been the
scene of heavy erosion since medieval times and this has changed the
landscape beyond recognition as well as revealing these early sites. It
seems inherently unlikely that people would have preferred to become
snowbound over winter with their sheep and nothing else to eat when
there was still land available at lower altitudes. It is on the other hand
8 Steinfinnsstaðir, dated by association with a pre-Christian burial, and
Þuríðarstaðir efri, dated by artifact typology to the ninth/tenth to eleventh/
twelfth centuries (Guðrún Sveinbjarnardóttir 1992, 41–46).
9 Undir Sandmúla, dated by artifact typology, in particular a large silver
hoard (Matthías Þórðarson 1910; Erkes 1911).
Fig. 9. Lundarreykjadalur in Borgarfjörður (part of larger area shown in Figures
1 and 6). Source: Orri Vésteinsson 1996b.
Patterns of Settlement in Iceland 25
quite likely that the large estates would from an early stage establish
shielings from which the upland pastures could be made use of. At
some later stages in the settlement process independent cottages may
have been set up in these areas but it seems that as soon as the forest
had been cleared from the lowlands, these marginal areas became
valued for their forest resources, both as pasture for pigs and cattle and
more importantly as a source of charcoal. These marginal areas were by
and large owned by the great estates and the rich churches associated
with them and in some cases it can be shown that such property rights
were quite ancient. An example is Geitland, which belonged to the
church at Reykholt and was clearly associated with the farm in the
landnám myth of the Reykhyltingar family.10 As soon as forests be-
came a valuable asset it is likely that the estate owners removed the
cottagers from such marginal areas in order to preserve the woodlands
and use them more efficiently.
Long after 1000 there were still pockets here and there which seem
not to have been cleared and which were used by neighbouring farms
as well as faraway estates for pasture and charcoal making. These are
invariably the very worst areas for agriculture, with poor soils where
erosion has invariably set in when the forest finally disappeared. In
Borgarfjörður there are two areas of this kind. In Skorradalur a large
number of estates and churches owned rights to pasture and wood-
cutting; here the last stage of the landnám was only accomplished in
the sixteenth century with the establishment of four new farms, Grund,
Grafardalur, Ytri Svangi and Eystri Svangi (Jarðabók Árna Magnússonar
og Páls Vídalíns III, 160–61, 170). In Hálsasveit inland from Reykholt
there seems to have been a swathe of forest separating the parishes of
Reykholt and Gilsbakki on the other side of Hvítá; by the thirteenth
century a large number of very small cottages had been established in
this forest that seem to have specialised in ironworking (Smith 1995,
334–36), but they had disappeared along with the forest by the late
fourteenth century.
10 According to this the son of Grímr, who had settled at Hvanneyri in the
wetlands at the mouth of Hvítá, was Úlfr, who took land in Geitland, and amongst
his descendants was Þórðr Solvason the ancestor of the Reykhyltingar (Íslenzk
fornrit I, 77–79). The family’s ancestry is, however, reckoned differently in
Melabók, an incomplete version of Landnámabók which contains much
material directly from the early thirteenth century Styrmisbók (Íslenzk fornrit
I, 78 n. 1).
26 Saga-Book
Conclusions
It has been suggested here that the very first settlers preferred to locate
their farms in areas of flooded wetlands; that such settlements were
inhabited by large numbers of people and quickly formed into large
estates with a wide and varied economic base. Latecomers had to make
do with slices of land in between these large estates. When all the really
good and easily occupied land had been seized, a second phase was
entered wherein land of lesser quality was chopped up into small units
and sold or rented out to new arrivals or second-generation Icelanders.
While the initial phase seems to have taken only a few decades the
second phase may have stretched into the eleventh century.
The sheer size of the original estates and the number of households
they sustained in later centuries suggests that they were from the
beginning worked by large groups of people. How these groups of
people were organised can only be guessed at. The long houses at
Herjólfsdalur and Hvítárholt would suggest that there could be several
households of equal standing whereas the later medieval pattern sug-
gests that the situation was somewhat more unequal. It is possible that
at such sites there were many households of different status, for in-
stance one main household with a large number of servants and slaves
and a number of smaller and dependent households. But it is just as
plausible that they consisted of a single household with many families
of different status, or a single household with a very large number of
slaves. What can be maintained is that the successful wetland settle-
ments which later appear as great estates were from the beginning
worked by a large number of people, at least enough to fill two or more
long-houses and probably always consisting of several families. The
principal reason why a large number of people were required on each
estate seems to have been the perceived need to maximise the utilisa-
tion of the greatest variety of resources. This probably far exceeded the
bare minimum needed to survive, especially after the initial phase of
settlement, and may suggest an economy geared towards equipping a
chosen few with the means to eat, drink and show off.
If these suggestions are taken seriously, and should they be proved
not far wrong by future research, it will have a serious effect on our
understanding of medieval Icelandic society. Instead of being a land of
isolated and independent farmers of equal status, it becomes a land of
several hundred powerful farmers each in control of a considerable
number of people on his own estate and having political authority over
up to three thousand lesser farmers and cottagers bound to the estate
Patterns of Settlement in Iceland 27
farmers by ties of ownership, and by the twelfth century also through
church attendance and the payment of tithes.
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