Ragnar Edvardsson

University of Iceland | HI · Research Centres

Species monitoring and conservation is increasingly challenging under current climate change scenarios. For the North Atlantic right whale (Eubalaena glacialis) this challenge is heightened by the added effects of complicated and uncertain past species demography. Right whales once had a much wider distribution across the North Atlantic Ocean, alth...

Stable isotope analyses of zooarchaeological material can be used to examine ecological variability in exploited species at centennial to millennial scales. Climate change is a notable driver of marine ecosystem change, although historical fishing is also likely to have impacted past marine systems. Fishing removes the oldest and largest individual...

Gautavík is a well-known archaeological site on the east coast of Iceland. It was partially excavated in 1979 and interpreted as a seasonal occupied trading site, abandoned shortly after c. 1500. However, recent archaeological research on the excavated ceramics, which hitherto had not been studied in detail, raised doubts about the interpretation r...

We use biochemical, biological, archaeological, and historical analysis to examine relationships between Atlantic cod migration , sea temperature, and shifts in the distribution and occupancy of historical fishing sites in Iceland during the last millennium. Results support the hypothesis that the cooling climate of the North Atlantic during the pe...

Archaeological records provide a unique source of direct data on long-term human-environment interactions and samples of ecosystems affected by differing degrees of human impact. Distributed long-term datasets from archaeological sites provide a significant contribution to establish local, regional, and continental-scale environmental baselines and...

Archaeological excavations of historical fishing sites across the North Atlantic have recovered high quantities of Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) bones. In the current study we use Atlantic cod otoliths from archaeological excavations of a historical fishing sites in north-west Iceland, dated to AD 970 –AD 1910 to examine historical growth trajectorie...

Full results from the first generalized linear mixed model. (DOCX)

Supporting data including all data used in the analysis presented. (XLSX)

Results from the second generalized linear mixed model. (DOCX)

R code for the statistical models. (DOCX)

Archaeological research in Iceland Archaeology has a long tradition in Iceland and some of the earliest research dates back to the nineteenth century. This interest in the field has always been connected with the large quantities of written sources from all periods throughout Icelandic history. In many cases, it can be said that Icelandic archaeolo...

Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) vertebrae from archaeological sites were used to study the history of the Icelandic Atlantic cod population in the time period of 1500-1990. Specifically, we used coalescence modelling to estimate population size and fluctuations from the sequence diversity at the cytochrome b (cytb) and Pantophysin I (PanI) loci. The mo...

ARCHAEOLOGIA ISLANDICA 9 (2011) 9-28 Icelandic archaeological research has mainly been focused on land based sites and submerged sites have received little or no attention. The number and condition of underwater archaeological sites is unknown and no national wreck database exists. It is likely that the underwater environment will come under increa...

A thousand years ago Viking age voyagers crossed the grey waters of the North Atlantic, colonizing the Faroes, Iceland, Greenland, and Vinland between AD 800 and 1000. However, early transatlantic migration was not to have the historical impact of the later European re-discovery of North America, and by the 16th century the Scandinavian North Atlan...

Early settlement in the North Atlantic produced complex interactions of culture and nature. A sustained program of interdisciplinary collaboration focused on ninth- to 13th-century sites and landscapes in the highland interior lake basin of Myvatn in Iceland and to contribute a long-term perspective to larger issues of sustainable resource use, soi...

As part of a cooperative archaeological project in NW Iceland (Strandasýsla) involving the National Museum of Iceland and Hunter College of the City University of New York, a small rescue excavation at the site of Finnbogastaðir generated a quantifiable collection of animal bones dating to the early modern period, mainly to the 18th century. The 18...

In the seventh consecutive season of archaeological excavations at Hofstaðir in Mývatnssveit, further expansion to the areas under investigation was made, specifically the completed stripping of the area to the east and north of the longhouse so that in effect, the whole perimeter around the longhouse has now been exposed. The longhouse interior (A...

Archaeological Investigations at Hofstaðir in Mývatnssveit ran into their fifth consecutive year this season, excluding the original survey in 1992. Last year, summaries of all previous work up to 1997 were published in the first issue of Archaeologia Islandica, a new journal specially dedicated to archaeological studies of Icelandic material (see...