The Kvarnbo Hall: Reconsidering the Importance of the Late Iron Age Åland Islands

ABSTRACT

This article accounts for and contextualizes a newly discovered monumental longhouse, a potential hall from the Late Iron Age, on the Åland Islands, Finland. The 45 m long building and its location are discussed in regional and historical context, in comparison to the full data set of coeval houses on Åland, and are argued to signal a social stratification, manifesting a higher level of achievement in this Late Iron Age society. This is further examined in the context of Iron Age settlement development. A rapid and large-scale colonization to Åland, evident in the middle of the first millennium AD, is for the first time explanatorily discussed, addressing the question of why this process occurred. Sudden population growth is linked in part to large-scale climatic disturbances, with fatal consequences in those areas of heavy agricultural dependency, forcing population movement to Åland driven by the presence of maritime resources, particularly seals, and available land.

Keywords:

• Åland Islands
• central place complex
• houses
• Iron Age settlement changes
• colonization
• climatic disturbances in the sixth century AD

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank Frands Herschend and Kim Darmark for their support and advice. I am also very grateful to Scott M. Fitzpatrick and two anonymous reviewers for their comments, which helped improve the article.

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Notes

1. The given figure of house foundations differs notably from some of the earlier published data; for example, 175 are mentioned by Karlsson (1987, 1997:90) and nearly 200 are stated by Núñez (1995:116). Those data are based on calculations, including houses from the high medieval and later periods (such as some dozen house foundations at Prästgården, Jo 22.4, and Borgboda, Sa 3.5) and the number of nearly 200 foundations is most likely a result of a positive approximation. In this connection, it is, however, also important to emphasize that the register of ancient monuments on Åland is not a static database, but subject to, among other things, re-evaluations and modifications, thus resulting in an ever changing basis for the general statistics.

2. Matts Dreijer has, however, arbitrarily hypothesized (1968:9) that colonization was connected to the growing demand for animal/seal oil due to whale allegedly vanishing in Western Europe in the middle of the sixth century AD.