Posted on 04/06/2007 2:26:34 PM PDT by blam
Iceland's Unwritten Saga
Volume 60 Number 2, March/April 2007
by Zach Zorich
Did Viking settlers pillage their environment?
Birch and willow forests like this one at Lake Mývatn used to cover much of Iceland's interior. Viking settlers cleared the forest for their pastures and burned the trees to make charcoal. The forests have never recovered. It is estimated that 90 percent of Iceland's pre-settlement forest is gone. (Sigurgeir Sigurjónsson)
Even when the weather is clear, gusts of wind lash the hillsides overlooking the Viking-age farm at Hrísheimar leaving the land raw and strewn with pebbles. A few miles east the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates are pulling apart, creating the fissure from which Iceland has sprung. Over millions of years the landscape here has been heaved up by volcanoes and flattened by glaciers. Sitting between the Arctic Circle and the warm Gulf Stream current, the climate shifts back and forth, balmy one day, wet and frigid the next. Iceland balances on many edges and nowhere is it more apparent than at Hrísheimar, on the border of a grassy marsh, a sub-Arctic desert, and the blurred fringe of recorded history.
Thomas McGovern of Hunter College has been working with a multinational team of archaeologists for the past 10 years to excavate a series of sites in the Mývatn district, an area 30 miles inland from Iceland's northern coast. The district is named for Lake Mývatn, which lies about two miles east of Hrísheimar. Covering 14 square miles but reaching a depth of only 15 feet, Mývatn is the annual nesting ground for about 30,000 ducks. This project is the first to explore the archaeology of an entire region of Iceland, and is a radical departure from traditional methods of studying Iceland's settlement based on historical documents. It is also changing the perception of what life was like for the earliest Icelanders and redefining a nation's history.
Sophia Perdikaris, Thomas McGovern, and a crew from Icelandic and U.S. universities enjoy a respite from the rain and the excavations at Hrísheimar. (Sigurgeir Sigurjónsson)
Until recently, most of what was known about Iceland's settlement came from its long and impressive literary tradition. The Icelandic sagas are some of the earliest narrative stories from Western Europe, but they were written 200 to 300 years after Iceland's settlement period, or landnám--meaning "land-taking."The historical picture the sagas create is in some ways incomplete and colored by medieval sensibilities, so excavations such as McGovern's provide the only direct evidence of life during the landnám.
A "Its not a simple story," says McGovern. "There is a sense of these people almost getting it right for a very long period of time and then something happens and they go over a threshold." McGovern hopes to learn more about how the Viking settlers managed to avoid destroying their land for centuries before the environment reached that point. As the worldwide climate changes and natural resources are exploited to their limits, Iceland may become an example for other nations that are approaching their own thresholds. Looking out over the farm's eroded remains, it isn't exactly clear whether we are seeing the past or the future.
Zach Zorich is associate editor at ARCHAEOLOGY.
GGG Ping.
(So, all in all, it's not totally bad news...)
“As the worldwide climate changes “
Oh, and speaking of global warming they are forecasting a touch of snow for Easter Sunday here in Dallas.
 |
Warning: This could be a high volume pinglist. Note: This pinglist covers--but not as much--Eastern Europe. There is already a moderate volume pinglist for that region. Ping if you see a pertinent thread. |
No message is necessary. To get on or get off this pinglist, freepmail here, with the appropriate subject. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
ping.
Icelanders are a mix of Nordic (from the Vikings) and Celtic (from Irish slaves), amongst others.
Or, how about the “Native” Americans practice of hunting bison by stampeding the herds over cliffs? They were doing a good job of exterminating them just as they had the mastodons, long before the nasty Europeans arrived.
The point is: Man has done some stupid things to the natural world, but Western civilization is not the cause.
Another industry to spring-up here (suing present day Norwegians) to get reparations from the Viking bloodline and reduce them to poverty.
Oh, I dunno. You have to make allowances for a culture that invented hominy cod.
I assume by masts, you mean ships. I think I once saw a number like 3.5 square miles of forest per a frigate.
Compare that to 200,000 pounds of (just) copper for a Trident submarine.
“Did Viking settlers pillage their environment?”
Ummm, most assuredly. And a lot of other people’s environments, too. Stupid question; to simply live is to use resources.
“The historical picture the sagas create is in some ways incomplete and colored by medieval sensibilities, so excavations such as McGovern’s provide the only direct evidence of life during the landnám. “
The written sagas are the final products of an effort at compilation of various oral traditions. It stands to reason they are “incomplete” (and more than likely innacurrate in many cases, too) for this reason alone. As pure history, they leave a lot to be desired (unless we find sagas with a known individual, event or such, that we can corroborate). As entertainment and an insight into the past, though, they are quite an adequate starting point as to guessing at the conditions under which men lived at that time.
“”There is a sense of these people almost getting it right for a very long period of time and then something happens and they go over a threshold.”
Overpopulation, perhaps? Iceland became a popular destination for the outlawed, the banished and the adventurous, as well as the more mundane types of settlers and traders.Doesn’t take a genius: finite space(island) = finite resources. Add more folks to the equation and things get rather stressful in a hurry.
“McGovern hopes to learn more about how the Viking settlers managed to avoid destroying their land for centuries before the environment reached that point.”
Two guesses: as time passed and the warring Scandanavian jarls formed secure kingdoms ruled by Christian Kings, able to preside over some semblance of order and economic stability, some (maybe most) returned home to continental Europe. We know some at least tried to emigrate further west, as well. Perhaps the mounting pressure of looming overpopulation at this point was relieved by one or both of these events?
“As the worldwide climate changes and natural resources are exploited to their limits, Iceland may become an example for other nations that are approaching their own thresholds. Looking out over the farm’s eroded remains, it isn’t exactly clear whether we are seeing the past or the future.”
I’m not even sure at how to respond to this. The author seems to imply that Iceland is some miracle of environmental conservation in the beginning of this paragraph and then ends by insinuating that it is perhaps a foretaste of eco-doom with this sentence?
Obviously the settlers on Iceland could not have survived there without pastures for their animals and fields for their crops.
If the environmental extremists had their way, we’d all commit suicide so we’d stop exhaling dirty greenhouse gases. They’re working on it, in any case.
Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on or off the
"Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list or GGG weekly digest
-- Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities, etc.
Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)
Perhaps there are some forms of vegetation which can replace what was lost.
This isn’t unusual in human history. Most of the Mediterranean Islands look as barren as they are thanks to goats, which can actually climb trees to defoliate them.
They also deforested the southwest US into a desert, by chopping down the trees which held the soil together. I don't know of any native Americans which planted trees, even though many were farmers.
That's what, a couple of houses for John Edwards? Keep the frigate and keelhaul the lawyer.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.