Símun V. Arge

• Tjóðsavnið - The National Museum of the Faroe Islands Nature & Culture

A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03328-2.

The maritime expansion of Scandinavian populations during the Viking Age (about ad 750–1050) was a far-flung transformation in world history1,2. Here we sequenced the genomes of 442 humans from archaeological sites across Europe and Greenland (to a median depth of about 1×) to understand the global influence of this expansion. We find the Viking pe...

The Viking maritime expansion from Scandinavia (Denmark, Norway, and Sweden) marks one of the swiftest and most far-flung cultural transformations in global history. During this time (c. 750 to 1050 CE), the Vikings reached most of western Eurasia, Greenland, and North America, and left a cultural legacy that persists till today. To understand the...

The offshore islands of the North Atlantic were among some of the last settled places on earth, with humans reaching the Faroes and Iceland in the late Iron Age and Viking period. While older accounts emphasizing deforestation and soil erosion have presented this story of island colonization as yet another social–ecological disaster, recent archaeo...

The paper presents a synopsis of the current evidence for the settlement chronology and Viking Age to Early Medieval paleoeconomy of the Faroe Islands. Special emphasis is placed on the recent interdisciplinary research carried out in the village of Sandur, on the island of Sandoy, as part of the Heart of the Atlantic project. A particularly import...

We report on the earliest archaeological evidence from the Faroe Islands, placing human colonization in the 4th-6th centuries AD, at least 300-500 years earlier than previously demonstrated archaeologically. The evidence consists of an extensive wind-blown sand deposit containing patches of burnt peat ash of anthropogenic origin. Samples of carboni...

This paper discusses the evidence for pig husbandry in the Faroes during the Norse and early Medieval periods. The evidence from zooarchaeology, biomolecular archaeology, and place-name evidence is reviewed, proposing that the keeping of pigs was an important part of the early paleoeconomy of the islands.

¹⁴C age measurements made on samples from three archaeological sites located on North Atlantic coasts were used to investigate the marine reservoir effect (MRE) at c. AD 1000. This is an important period within human cultural and palaeoenvironmental research as it is a time when Norse expansion to the North Atlantic islands occurred, dur...

We present palaeoenvironmental, geomorphological, archaeological, and place-name data which allow a holistic assessment of the history of landscape change on Sandoy, Faroe Islands, especially in terms of the changes that occurred in response to the colonization of the island by humans. In contrast to other situations in the North Atlantic region, t...

This paper reports on the zooarchaeological and archaeobotanical remains from the initial season of excavations at the Norse period site at Undir Junkarinsfløtti in the Faroe islands. These remains represent the first zooarchaeological analysis undertaken for the Faroes and only the third archaeobotanical assemblage published from the islands. The...

This paper reports on the zooarchaeological and archaeobotanical remains from the first season of excavations at the Norse period site at Undir Junakarinsfløtti in the Faroe islands. These remains represent the first zooarchaeological analysis undertaken for the Faroes and only the third archaeobotanical assemblage published from the islands. The e...

Apart from the possible, but unproven presence of some Irish hermits, the Norse colonizers of the Faroe Islands arrived in an unsettled landscape around A.D. 800. The archipelago was essentially unwooded and rich in bird and marine life. The area of land suitable for settlement and farming was relatively meagre and concentrated in coastal areas; in...

This paper is a critical evaluation of the traditional use of sparse written sources which have formed the basis for prevailing concepts of the first settlement of the Faroe Islands. Strong reservations are stated regarding radiocarbon data settlement horizons revealed by recent pollen botanical studies, which are thought to indicate a pre-Viking s...