The Settlement of Iceland + grade and marks scheme

Alistair Pitts

Alistair Pitts

The Discovery and Settlement of Iceland: When, who and why?

Due to Iceland’s remote position in the North Atlantic Ocean, this unique land of

volcanoes and glaciers did not become host to a permanent human population until

relatively recently, that is to say, within the last one and a half millennia. This novel

situation by comparison to the rest of Europe has made it of particular interest to

academics in a number of different fields, as Iceland provides a rare opportunity to

Alistair Pitts

trace and evaluate the development of a society from very soon after its inception.1

According to written sources, the Icelandic population for a considerable time was an

anomaly in European terms in that it was not ruled over by a king or military

aristocracy. Iceland would provide the launch pad for further excursions west; an

ultimately ill-fated Norse colonisation of Greenland, and also the first known landings

in what the Viking explorers named Vinland and is now called North America. The

aim of this exercise is to provide an overview and analysis of the various

interpretations of the evidence which provides clues as to when and how the human

race became aware of the existence of Iceland, when the colonisation took place, by

whom and what motivating factors prompted these pioneers to seek to undertake such

a venture at this particular time. Due to the conspicuous scarcity of written sources

with regard to the landnám (as the settlement, or more precisely, the land-taking

period is referred to in Icelandic) this will prove to be something of an inter-

disciplinary exercise, requiring attention to the work of archaeologists and genetic

scientists in addition to the historical material.

The Written Sources

It seems natural to commence with a description of what might be tentatively referred

to as the primary sources. Foremost amongst these are the Íslendingabók (the Book of

the Icelanders and the Landnámabók (the Book of Settlements).

The Íslendingabók was probably written between 1122 and 1132 by Ari inn froði (the

learned, or wise) Þorgilsson, a Christian priest and goði2(a chieftain of sorts). It

1 Smith, K P ‘Landnàm: the settlement of Iceland in archaeological and historical perspective’ World

Archaeology Vol. 26, No.3, Routledge, London (1995) p.319 2 Bjock, J L ‘Medieval Iceland’ Hisarlik Press, Enfield Lock, Middlesex, (1993) p.15

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gives brief descriptions of significant events in the history of Iceland from the

founding of the first settlements until the time at which the sources themselves were

written. In the medieval period there were two versions of it in existence, an ‘Older’

and a ‘Younger’ though today only the latter survives.3 It enjoyed a high reputation

from its time of writing in the high middle ages until the twentieth century, when it

was subjected to much more stringent source-criticism.4 The Landnámabók originally

dates from the early 1100s and in comparison to the Íslendingabók it is much

lengthier, covering several hundred pages in a modern printed format.5 Its purported

purpose is to act as a record of the settlement and genealogy of the Icelanders.6 There

are a number of different versions still in existence and these are reckoned to have

been written between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries.7 As both of these describe

events that they claim to have occurred over two hundred years prior to the time of

authorship, this automatically raises considerable questions as to their accuracy. It has

been pointed out that this gap of years was to some extent bridged by the fact that Ari

Þorgilsson was raised by Hallr Þorarinsson, who was reported to have been able to

recall his baptism in 998 and to have been famed for his impressive capability of

memory. He is described as providing a link, albeit an oral one, with earlier settlers

and their traditions.8 It has been suggested rather anecdotally elsewhere that one

should not underestimate the human capacity for recalling detail.9 Whilst this is a

reasonably valid point, even if one assumes, for the sake of argument, that both Ari

3 Bjock, J L ‘Medieval Iceland’ p.15

4 Karlsson, G ‘Iceland’s 1100 years’ C. Hurst & Co. Ltd, London (2000) p.11




8 Logan, F D ‘The Vikings in History’ Hutchinson & Co. Ltd, London, (1983) p.64

9 Rosenblad, E & Sigurðardóttir-Rosenblad, R ‘Iceland from Past to Present’ Màl og menning,

Reykjavík, (1993) p.5

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and Hallr both gave accurate renditions of what they were told, there is still a

considerable time distance between the life of Hallr and the earliest events described

in the Íslendingabók, and that distance gives plenty of scope for forgetfulness,

misunderstanding and deliberate reinvention. Bjock has “no doubt that Ari was a

careful historian”10 but goes on to qualify this by noting that he was not always

entirely objective, as he was keen to present his version of Icelandic history in a way

that would both stress the country’s Norwegian heritage and bolster the strength of the

Church. He is also regarded as having a bias towards his own region of Breiðafjörðr

in terms of the events he records. Also, he traces his own descent and includes

amongst his ancestry kings of Norway and Sweden as well the Norse gods Njörðr and

Freyr.11 This tempts one to suggest that Ari may have been inclined to fabricate

details when he did not know the real answers, and that if he did this with regard to

his own lineage, the odds that he did it elsewhere in his narrative seem rather

favorable. Karlsson praises Ari’s ‘keen sense of chronology’ and focus on natural,

rather than supernatural events.12 In order to establish Iceland in a European context,

Ari mentioned what was happening elsewhere simultaneously at the time of various

events in Icelandic history, with particular attention being given to the reign of King

Harald Fairhair in Norway. Whilst this superficially augments the convincingness of

Ari’s account, it does not in any way corroborate his story. It merely underlines that

he was keen to give Iceland a credible history that fitted in with the rest of Europe and

he had done his research in order to achieve the desired effect. Einarsson levels the

accusation that both were compiled with the aim of reinforcing the land claims of

10

Bjock, J L ‘Medieval Iceland’ p.16 11


Karlsson, G ‘Iceland’s 1100 years’p.11

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certain families.13 This suggestion presents something of a problem, as it is seemingly

impossible to convict or clear the authors of having such motivations for compiling

their accounts. Therefore the suspicion must remain and be taken into consideration in

the overall assessment. The reliability Landnámabók is perhaps even more subject to

question. As has already been mentioned, there are no known surviving copies of it in

its original form, and to complicate matters there is a lack of uniformity amongst the

later versions. It is believed that alterations were made during the copying process in

the following centuries to suit the tastes of medieval historians. It even appears that at

times, these some of these individuals substituted their own genealogies for the

originals.14 These later versions reflect political changes that were taking place at the

time of writing. For example, the earliest copies speak of the Norwegian ruler Harald

Fairhair as a tyrant, whereas later variants regard him as a law giver. It is no

coincidence that the latter versions were compiled during the thirteenth century at a

time when Iceland was being incorporated into the Norwegian monarchy.15 Thus the

rather frustrating reality of the situation is that it is difficult to know which surviving

version is most faithful to the original, which itself, due to its late composition in

relation to the events it describes, is by no means reliable. In light of the point made

about the effect of political changes, it is perhaps preferable to regard the earliest

copies as most resembling the original.

For some, the weight of this considerable collection of criticism of Íslendingabók and

Landnámabók crushes their combined credibility completely. Einarsson calls them

‘irrelevant for the initial stage of settlement until about 1000 AD.’16 It has also been

13

Einarsson, B F ‘The Settlement of Iceland; A Critical Approach’ Hið Íslenska Bókmenntafélag,

Reykjavík, (1995) p.19 14


Rafnsson, S in ‘The Oxford Illustrated History of the Vikings’ Oxford University Press, Oxford

(1997) p.112 16

Einarsson, B F ‘The Settlement of Iceland; A Critical Approach’ p.19

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noted that a romantic tendency amongst the present day Icelanders has meant that

there is an unwillingness to disregard them entirely.17 One notices, particularly

(though by no means exclusively) in non-historians, an eagerness to be rid of the

written sources.

Logan takes a more moderate position, believing that though it would not be wise to

take these sources as entirely historical or accurate, there is a good chance that they

resemble the earliest Icelandic traditions fairly closely.18

It has been shown somewhat comprehensively that the Íslendingabók and

Landnámabók cannot be expected to be fully reliable in terms of exact details for a

number of convincing reasons. Nevertheless, because of the scantiness of written

records on the subject of the Icelandic settlement it feels somewhat churlish not to

attempt to make some use of, or identify any element of truth in them. Therefore,

aspects of the sources shall be treated almost as hypotheses to be proved or otherwise

by the use of other methods. It is important however, to avoid the trap of the bad

scientist (though the same would also be the case in a bad historian), namely to begin

the experiment with a particular desired result in mind, and so distort and

misrepresent the evidence in order to produce the required conclusion.

The Discovery and Settlement

It is possible that Iceland had been discovered long before the Viking Age by Pytheas,

an Ancient Greek explorer. His version of events have not survived, therefore what

we know about his voyage is derived from later sources that are not always entirely

17

Hermanns-Auðardóttir, M ‘The Early Settlement of Iceland’ Norwegian Archaeological review,

Vol. 24, No. 1, Scandinavian University Press (1991) p.1 18

Logan, F D ‘The Vikings in History’p.64

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consistent with each other.19 Polybius, Strabo, Pliny and Tacitus named the country

he found ‘Thule’ and described it as being a six days journey north of Britain.20 It is

described as a land where sunlight persisted at midnight during the middle of

summer,21 a phenomenon present in Iceland. However, some versions of Pytheas’ tale

say that ‘Thule’ was inhabited by ‘barbarians’. As there is no archæological record of

such an early inhabitation of Iceland, and therefore it is suspected that it is more

probable that the land Pytheas found was actually northern Norway.22 Pytheas’

voyage into the farthest reaches of the north, though seemingly not to Iceland is worth

mentioning because it seems that others writing later believed in the existence of

‘Thule’ and that this mysterious lost country lay somewhere in the North Atlantic

Ocean.

There is a faint possibility that the first discoverers of Iceland were Romans, as four

Roman coins have been discovered in Iceland.23 However, there is no additional

record either literary or archaeological of such a Roman presence in Iceland. Nor is

there any mention to be found of a Roman vessel returning out of the northern waters

bearing tidings of a strange uncharted island. Though of course, it is possible that such

an account once existed but no longer survives. Nevertheless, the absence of evidence

for a Roman discovery of Iceland besides these coins means that the prevailing view

is that they found their way to Iceland somewhat later, in hands of a non-Roman. He

(or she) could have ‘picked them up abroad, as part of a plundered hoard, as a

keepsake or curio, or for any of the thousand and one arbitrary reasons why a man has

19

Jones, G ‘The North Atlantic Saga’ (second edition) Oxford University Press, Oxford (1986) p.30 20

Logan, F D ‘The Vikings in History’ p.61 21

Karlsson, G ‘Iceland’s 1100 years’ p.9 22

Jones, G ‘The North Atlantic Saga’ p.30 23

Nordahl, E ‘Reykjavík from the Archaeological Point of View, Aun 12’ The Department of

Archæology, Uppsala University (1988) p. 114

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such things in his possession’.24

Thus having very reasonable grounds for throwing out Roman claims to the discovery

of Iceland, the next candidates are the Irish, and they are by far the most probable.

The Venerable Bede, writing in the early eighth century claimed that Irish monks had

rediscovered ‘Thule’, however, it is possible that this was not Iceland, but one of the

other North Atlantic islands, or as was probably the case with Pytheas, the Norwegian

coast.25The similarity of Bede’s account to the various tales of Pytheas has also been

noted,26 so it is possible that the Anglo-Saxon cleric was being over-enthusiastic in

the use of his imagination and the classical sources when recounting the travels of

Irish hermits. Therefore, one cannot proclaim with much assurance that Bede’s Thule

was what was to later become known as Iceland. The ‘sober testimony’27 of the Liber

de Mensura Orbis Terræ by the Irish Monk Dicuil, writing in AD 825, gives a similar

account of the seafaring of his fellows:

‘All round our island of Hibernia [says Dicuil] there are islands, some small, some

tiny. Off the coast of the island of Britain are many islands, some big, some small

some middling; some lie in the sea to the south of Britain, others to the west; but they

are most numerous in the northwestern sphere and the north. On some of these

islands I have lived, others set foot, of some had a sight, of others read….

It is now thirty years since priests [clerici] who lived on that island [i.e. Thule] from

the first day of February to the first day of August told me that not only at the summer

solstice, but in the days on either side of it, the setting sun hides itself at the evening

hour as if behind a little hill, so that no darkness occurs during that very brief period

24




Jones, G ‘The North Atlantic Saga’ p.34

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of time, but whatever task a man wishes to perform, even to picking the lice out of his

shirt, he can manage it precisely as in broad daylight. And had they been on a high

mountain, the sun would at no time have been hidden from them….

They deal in fallacies who have written that the sea around the island is frozen, and

that there is continuous day without night from the vernal to the autumnal equinox,

and vice versa, perpetual night from the autumnal equinox to the vernal; for those

sailing at an expected time of great cold have made their way thereto, and dwelling

on the island enjoyed always alternate night and day save at the time of the solstice.

But after one day’s sailing from there to the north they found the frozen sea. ’28

Dicuil’s version is more convincing than that of Bede, given the very clear, specific

and precise nature of the account taken down directly from these mariners

themselves,29as displayed by this quotation. As their description fits Iceland so well, it

virtually excludes from all reasonable doubt the fact that Iceland was discovered by

Irish hermits as a result of their search of solitude on the northern ocean.

Ari Þorgilsson mentions that there were Christian men in Iceland when the first

Norsemen arrived, but that they left soon after this, not wanting to live amongst the

pagan Vikings. They (presumably in their haste to get away) left behind them books

that made it clear that they were Irishmen, as well as bells and croziers. The

Norsemen referred to these people as ‘papar’.30 Karlsson describes this extract

‘confirms’ Dicuil’s account. However, this is not the case for several reasons; firstly,

as was established earlier at some length, the Íslendingabók is not a source that can be

28

Dicuil, ‘Liber de Mensura Orbis Terræ’ quoted in Jones, G ‘The North Atlantic Saga’ p.34-5 29


Jones, G ‘The North Atlantic Saga’ p.144

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firmly relied upon, but also because it does not necessarily follow that if Irish hermits

were present at the end of the eighth century their successors a number of decades

later would certainly follow in their footsteps (or, more in keeping with their mode of

transport, their wake). Nevertheless, Ari’s story is far from implausible, and its

believability is helped by the evidence of Icelandic place names such as ‘Papey’ and

‘Papos’ which probably reflect the areas in which the Norsemen had come across

these Irishmen.31

One might ask, “What does it matter, as far as the settlement is concerned, who

found Iceland and when this happened?” The significance of the Irish discovery of

Iceland is that it may possibly have indirectly led to the settlement by the Norse. The

fact that others knew such an island existed may have caused Vikings to look for it.

And it seems to me that one has a better chance of finding something, even if that

thing be an island, if one is looking for it, and has a reasonably good idea where to

look than by accident. Though it cannot be proved, it seems reasonable to suggest that

it is quite likely that Norwegian Vikings, who had much to do with Ireland in the

ninth century first heard of a country far out in the Atlantic ocean from the Irish that

they came into contact with.

The other possibility of course, is that the Vikings did discover Iceland by accident,

and this is the conclusion that is arrived at in several versions of the Landnámabók.

One of them claims that it was a Norwegian named Nadoddr, who found Iceland and

another attributes this to Garðar Svavarsson, both of whom made their discovery after

being thrown off course in a storm.32 As already established, it is unlikely that the

Landnámabók is a faithful representation of the precise details, but if the idea that a

31


Jones, G ‘The North Atlantic Saga’ p.157-9

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ship’s crew could lose its way like this was believable to readers in the twelfth and

thirteenth centuries, who may well have had experience of navigating the North

Atlantic, it suggests that possibility that this may be what actually happened several

centuries before should not be treated with derision. Karlsson makes the point that as

they had no compass, Viking seafarers’ methods of navigation were reliant on the

visibility of sun and the stars, so if weather conditions obscured these, then it was

very hard to know which direction one was travelling in.33 Logan describes the North

Atlantic islands as ‘stepping stones’34once voyages were being made to the Faeroe

Islands on a regular basis, it was likely that sooner or later a crew would miscalculate

and overshoot, ending up in Iceland as a result.

It is unfortunate that there is a lack of convincing evidence for the date of the Norse

voyages of exploration of Iceland, as if these were known it would be an aid towards

establishing the time of the settlement itself. The settlement was a conscious decision

to emigrate, a deliberate undertaking to start afresh in a new country.35 It hardly

seems plausible to suggest that these would-be colonists packed their ships with all

the things they would need to start a new life in a distant land without really knowing

where it was, hoping on the off-chance that they would find somewhere inhabitable.

They would not have taken such a risk until they were confident that it was one worth

taking, and they probably would not have believed this to be the case until a relatively

substantial number of successful voyages had been to Iceland and back, bringing with

them favourable reports.

The Íslendingabók dates the founding of the first Norse settlements in Iceland to the

33



Logan, F D ‘The Vikings in History’ p.64

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870s.36 A variety of claims as to the accuracy or otherwise of this account, based on a

variety of different methods.

Iceland’s status as a volcanic country has enabled the use of tephrochronology in

attempts to place a date on the settlement. Tephra is essentially volcanic material, ash

and pumice that is usually deposited when a volcano erupts.37 Tephrochronology was

developed by matching layers of tephra to written records of volcanic eruptions, using

chemical analysis to verify that the material of which the layers were made up was

consistent with the volcanoes that the written sources attributed the eruptions to.38

Dating by tephrochronology works on the logical principle that anything below a

definite layer of tephra must be older than that layer.39 The first signs of human

inhabitation have been found just above a double layer of two different colours, and

traces of this layer have been found in the turf of which the oldest houses were

constructed, indicating that they were built within a few decades of the corresponding

volcanic eruption. This is thus referred to as the settlement layer.40 Pollen analyses of

samples taken from within, and in some cases just below the settlement layer indicate

an abrupt change in the Icelandic vegetation which strongly implies human

involvement. There is a decline in birch which indicates tree-felling, an increase in

grass that would correspond with the introduction of the grazing of livestock and the

beginnings of grain, presumably brought by the settlers from their homeland.41

Carbon-14 dating has been carried out on the settlement layer, indicating that it dates

36


Vilhjálmsson, V Ö ‘Dating Problems in Icelandic Archaeology’ Norwegian Archaeological review,

Vol. 23, Nos. 1-2, Scandinavian University Press (1990) p. 44 38

Vilhjálmsson, V Ö ‘Dating Problems in Icelandic Archaeology’ p. 44 39



Karlsson, G ‘Iceland’s 1100 years’ p.13

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from between the seventh and ninth centuries.42 Such an imprecise figure is hardly

very helpful in establishing the age of the settlement. Tephrochronology has yielded

results have tended to confirm the traditional, that is, the source based interpretation

of when Iceland was colonised. Vilhjálmsson has concerns regarding the

methodology which was used in the development of tephrochronology. He states that

subsequent to its development, source criticism has become much more stringent.

Whereas tephrochronologists were not sufficiently selective in their use of written

“evidence”, often dating volcanic eruptions and their corresponding tephra layers

using annals written sometimes two or three hundred years after this activity was

reported to have taken place.43 He quite rightly adds that the early Icelandic sources

were not written with the sole expressed purpose of cataloguing the activity of the

countries’ active volcanoes. This goes some way to explaining, for example, why

seventeen layers of tephra derived from Mount Katla can be held to have been

deposited within historical times, (presumably through carbon dating, though

Vilhjálmsson is not specific) though there are only fourteen instances of eruptions of

Mount Katla on record.44 It seems that the reliability of tephrochronology has not

been called into question because of over-confidence in the written sources.

Ice core chronology, a method based on the tracing of yearly snowfall ‘like the annual

rings of a tree’ has been used in an attempt to verify the findings of

tephrochronology.45 According to Karlsson, traces of glass characteristic of the

settlement layer have been found in ice that is believed by scientists to have fallen as

snow within a couple of years of 871, thus dating the settlement year to this time. If

42




Karlsson, G ‘Iceland’s 1100 years’ p.13

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this is correct, this suggests that Ari Þorgilsson’s date for the settlement is slightly too

late, as humans had already begun to have an impact on the Icelandic ecosystem by

the time he attributes to the beginning their first permanent settlement.46 Vilhjálmsson

contradicts the notion that traces of the tephra layer can be found in the icecap.47 He

also casts doubt upon the idea that peaks in the levels of acidity within the ice core

brought about by volcanic eruptions can be regarded as a reliable method with which

to prove or disprove the accuracy of tephrochronology. He argues that other volcanic

countries in the northern hemisphere do not have the same literary traditions and thus

acidity peaks tend to have been automatically regarded as having been caused by

Icelandic volcanoes when this is not necessarily the case.48 It is also noted that ‘the

greatest Icelandic explosive eruption of historical times, as far as tephra is concerned’

-Öræfajökull in 1362- does not seem to have produced a corresponding high acidity

level.49 Therefore it seems that the ice core method is an inexact science, full of

anomalies and to reiterate, it cannot be used to verify tephrochronology.

One of the most controversial statements concerning the dating of the landnám is

Margrét Hermanns-Auðardóttir’s claim that Iceland was settled in the Merovingian

period, close to 700 AD.50 Its controversy springs from the fact that the settlement has

generally been assumed to have taken place during the Viking Age, and argument has

concentrated on determining the precise point within that timeframe that it occurred.

Hermanns-Auðardóttir bases her assertion on idea that neither the written sources nor

tephrochronology can be trusted to produce accurate dates (which, as already shown,

46





Hermanns-Auðardóttir, M ‘The Early Settlement of Iceland’ p.2

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is a valid assumption) and that charcoal found in an archaeological site has been dated

using the carbon-14 method to the seventh century.51 Archaeological evidence such

as building type suggests that these settlers came from south-western Norway.52 She

states that the artefacts suggest that Icelandic settlement of the Merovingian and early

Viking Period was largely egalitarian with little in terms of organised defences, so it

was easy for those who arrived in late Viking times to take over, and therefore there is

no record of the earliest settlers.53 This whole theory seems to be maintained on one

rather thin piece of evidence, the radiocarbon dating of the charcoal. It is quite

possible that this can be accounted for, as it is quite possible that the wood burnt was

rather older than the settlement itself.54 It was been shown that Icelandic conditions

allow driftwood to survive for centuries on the beaches.55

Record of inhabitants or evidence of their presence is conspicuously absent in the

Dicuil’s account of the travels of the Irish monks, though of course it is entirely

possible that settlers were there, but their paths never crossed those of the Irish

travellers.

Besides the aforementioned coins, Iceland has not yielded any pre-Viking artefacts

nor have any discernibly pre-Viking graves been found56, which is contrary to what

one would expect, had Iceland been populated before this time.

Boathouses dating from the Roman and Migration periods indicate that the peoples of

the west Norwegian coast had a long seafaring tradition,57 however, it is rather

51

Hermanns-Auðardóttir, M ‘The Early Settlement of Iceland’ p.2 52



Mahler, D & Malmros, C Norwegian Archaeological review, Vol. 24, No. 1, Scandinavian

University Press (1991) p.15 55

Eldjárn, K (1989) cited in Smith, K P ‘Landnàm: the settlement of Iceland in archæological and

historical perspective’ p.325 56

Nordahl, E ‘Reykjavík from the Archaeological Point of View, Aun 12’ p. 114 57

Hermanns-Auðardóttir, M ‘The Early Settlement of Iceland’ p.7

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doubtful that they had the necessary maritime technology in order to make such a

voyage prior to the Viking epoch.58

One must conclude that with the evidence available that it is not possible to fix a

precise date on either the discovery or settlement of Iceland. However, the artefacts

uncovered thus far indicate that it occurred during the Viking period. Until a more

convincing basis for the theory of a pre-Viking settlement of Iceland is produced, this

possibility should be dismissed as unlikely.

The Origins and Identity of the Settlers

The question of where the Icelanders originally came from is one of some importance

for the national identity of the country’s present day inhabitants. The Landnámabók

indicates that the majority of settlers were from Norway, but in addition came others,

from Celtic lands and a number of these are specifically referred to as Irish.59 Though

Norse culture and language was dominant in Iceland a number personal and place

names as well as a few words connected with labour indicate a Celtic element.60 The

proportion of the settlers of Celtic descent has been the subject of considerable

speculation and research. Logan claims that modern Icelandic historians have tended

to overstate the Celtic component in order to explain the differences between their

country and the rest of Scandinavia.61 He believes that seven per cent of the settlers

mentioned in the Landnámabók were from recognizably Celtic lands, foremost

58

Jones, G ‘The North Atlantic Saga’ p.5-6 59


Bjarnason , O et al. ‘The Blood Groups of the Icelanders’ Annals of Human Genetics 36, Cambridge

University Press, London (1973) p.428 61

Logan, F D ‘The Vikings in History’ p.66-7

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amongst these, Ireland and the Outer Hebrides.62 As discussed earlier, reliance on this

particular source, especially for as precise details as the names and place of origins of

individuals is not advisable. Besides this, the Landnámabók only accounts for about

one thousand people, four hundred of which are actually named.63 Given that a

census of Iceland taken by bishop Gizur Isleifsson indicated that the population of

Iceland was seventy thousand in 110664, it is hard to believe that such a large

population increase from a starting population of one thousand could have occurred

within two or three hundred years. If the Landnámabók does not account for every

settler, how are we to be sure that it is a representative sample of the initial Icelandic

population as a whole?

One method used in an attempt to determine the origin of the Icelanders is the use of

genetic science to compare the modern population of Iceland with those of Ireland,

Scotland and Norway. Comparisons between the frequencies of the different

phenotypes within the ABO blood group system showed a much stronger similarity

between the Icelandic population and those of Ireland and Scotland than between the

Icelandic and Norwegian populations.65 Though this would imply that the majority of

the settlers came from the Celtic regions of the British Isles, the results are probably

misleading. It is presumptuous to suppose that allelic frequencies in all the countries

concerned have remained the same as they were over one thousand years ago. This

assumes that the present populations are the direct descendants of those of the Viking

Age,66and that conditions within these countries have not had a selective effect for or

against particular alleles. Whilst subsequent immigrants to Iceland have been

62


Bjarnason , O et al. ‘The Blood Groups of the Icelanders’ p. 427 64



Bjarnason , O et al. ‘The Blood Groups of the Icelanders’ p. 451

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primarily Norwegian, (which would increase the similarity between the two groups,

rather than reduce it)67 Norway and Ireland have been subject to foreign rule for

much of the last millennium, and this may have resulted in a greater mixing of these

populations with ‘outsiders’ than might have otherwise been the case. Adelsteinsson

has shown that smallpox is likely to have had a distorting effect on the frequencies of

the different phenotypes within the ABO blood group system. Those with blood

groups A or AB had a reduced chance of survival.68 In Scandinavia smallpox was an

endemic disease, which tended to occur in childhood when mortality rates are lower

than in adulthood.69 Iceland and Ireland’s comparative isolation and low population

meant that endemic smallpox was not sustained and thus resistance levels were low.

Subsequently smallpox occurred in severe epidemics.70 It has been noted that there

is a greater level of similarity of allele frequencies at other chromosomal loci71

between Iceland and Norway than between Iceland and Ireland.72

Genetic science has not satisfactorily established the relative proportions of

Norwegian and Celtic settlers. The dominance of Norse culture suggests that either

the Norsemen were in the majority, or that they enjoyed a position of dominance over

the Celtic element. This would fit with the traditional source-based explanation for the

Celtic element. Vikings who had settled in Ireland had taken Irish wives, concubines

67

Thompson, E A ‘The Icelandic Admixture Problem’ Annals of Human Genetics 37, Cambridge

University Press (1973) p. 68

Adelsteinsson, S ‘Possible changes in the frequency of the human ABO blood groups in Iceland

due to smallpox epidemic selection’ Annals of Human Genetics 49, Cambridge University Press (1985)

p. 278 69


due to smallpox epidemic selection’ p. 279 70


due to smallpox epidemic selection’ p. 279 71

(not to be confused with Loki) 72


due to smallpox epidemic selection’ p. 281

Alistair Pitts

and thralls which they brought with them to Iceland.73

The Causes of the Settlement of Iceland

Explaining why the exodus to Iceland from both Norway and parts of the British Isles

occurred is somewhat difficult without a precise date for when it occurred. The

traditional explanation attributes responsibility to Norwegian king Harald Fairhair.

Snorri Sturlason, author of ‘Heimskringla’ (a history of the Kings of Norway)

attributes to the unprecedented collection of taxes and a related encroachment onto

long-standing rights of landholding freeman to Harald.74 As Snorri was writing in the

thirteenth century about events of the late ninth century, one is inclined to be sceptical

as far as his reliability is concerned. Yet his explanation fits nicely with the

minimalist ‘Free State’ system of government that was established in Iceland, if it is

seen as being the manifestation of conscious desire to prevent a repeat of the type

royal tyranny that Harald had imposed from happening in Iceland. It is difficult to be

convinced that Harald was responsible for the exodus to Iceland. Some versions of the

Landnámabók claim that settlers appealed to Harald for arbitration in a dispute over

land,75 behaviour hardly consistent with people who wanted nothing to do with the

Norwegian King. In a case of clash between two sources which were written long

after the events they describe which neither provide evidence to substantiate, one does

not know which to believe, if any.

It has been suggested that Vikings went to Iceland because they found that resistance

to their activities in some parts of Europe was becoming more effective. This is

73


Bjock, J L ‘Medieval Iceland’ p.53-4 75

Bjock, J L ‘Medieval Iceland’ p.55

Alistair Pitts

certainly true of Alfred the Great’s kingdom of Wessex.76 However, the Vikings who

were attacking England were primarily of Danish, rather than Norwegian origin.

Sawyer believes that in contrast with the Danes, Norwegian Viking activity was

primarily motivated by the desire to find land to settle. In spite of profitable raids on

English monasteries early in the Viking period, subsequent Norwegian excursions

were primarily focused on poorer and more remote areas, implying that it was land to

settle rather than wealth that they were after.77 If this is the case, the settlement of the

uninhabited Iceland was simply a continuation of this tendency. This general trend

amongst the Norwegians for taking to the sea in search land to settle was possibly the

consequence of pressure on land resources in Norway. The large number of graves

found dating from the beginning of the Viking period in comparison to previous

centuries suggests that there was a rapid population increase that may have acted as an

incentive for many to emigrate.78

Conclusion

Unfortunately, the lack of contemporary sources and the inherent unreliability of

those composed at a later date make it very difficult to find satisfactory answers to

many of the questions relating to the Norse settlement of Iceland. What is clear is that

the settlement was indeed primarily Norse in character, though the initial population

contained a Celtic element, but its extent is impossible to determine with any

confidence at this stage. The inability to determine the dates of the discovery of

Iceland and commencement of the settlement process within a narrow timeframe in

76


Sawyer, P H ‘The Age of the Vikings’ The Camelot Press Ltd, London and Southampton (1962) p.

198-9 78

Sawyer, P H ‘The Age of the Vikings’ p. 200

Alistair Pitts

turn makes it difficult to be sure of what caused the settlement, if the reasons behind it

differ from the factors that were behind Norwegian Viking activity in general across

the whole period.

Alistair Pitts

Bibliography

Adelsteinsson, S ‘Possible changes in the frequency of the human ABO blood groups in Iceland due

to smallpox epidemic selection’ Annals of Human Genetics 49, Cambridge University Press (1985)

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University Press, London (1973)

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Press (1991)

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Archæology, Uppsala University (1988)

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University Press, Oxford (1997)

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Reykjavík, (1993)

Sawyer, P H ‘The Age of the Vikings’ The Camelot Press Ltd, London and Southampton (1962)

Smith, K P ‘Landnàm: the settlement of Iceland in archaeological and historical perspective’ World

Archaeology Vol. 26, No.3, Routledge, London (1995)

Thompson, E A ‘The Icelandic Admixture Problem’ Annals of Human Genetics 37, Cambridge

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