Coastal connections, local fishing, and sustainable egg harvesting: patterns of Viking Age inland wild resource use in Mývatn district, Northern Iceland

Abstract

The 'Landscapes of Settlement Project' has carried out archaeological and paleoenvironmental research in the Lake Mývatn region of N. Iceland since 1996. Animal bone collections dating from the late 9th century to the early 13th century AD have been recovered from five sites in different ecological zones around the lake, and three of these sites provide multiple phases datable through radiocarbon, artefacts, and volcanic tephra. Modern systematic biological and geological investigations in the Mývatn district date to the 19th century and a detailed picture of the recent ecology can be combined with both archaeological and historical evidence for long term resource exploitation by humans in this inland region. Analysis of bird bones and bird eggshell suggests that the locally managed sustainable harvest of migratory waterfowl eggs carried out over the last 150 years extends back to the 9th century. These inland archaeofauna also include significant numbers of marine fish and sea birds, marine mollusca, and a few seal and porpoise bones. Marine fish remains recovered indicate specialised transport of partial skeletons missing most cranial and some thoracic vertebrae, suggesting that a cured fish product was being regularly brought to inland farms during the early years of the settlement. Inter-regional exchange and a pre-Hanseatic artisanal fish trade prior to AD 1000 suggests the importance of preserved marine fish in early Scandinavian economies, and may shed light on the source of the 11th century 'fish event horizon' recently documented in southern Britain.

Keywords:

• ZOOARCHAEOLOGY
• COD
• TROUT
• CHAR
• DUCKS
• PTARMIGAN
• SEABIRDS
• MYVATN