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Norse agriculture in Greenland? Farming in a remote medieval landscape

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Peter Steen Henriksen at The National Museum of Denmark
Peter Steen Henriksen
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Abstract

The aim of the project Norse Farming in Greenland: Agriculture on the edge was to determine whether the Norse farmers actually cultivated crops in Greenland during colonisation in the Viking age and the medieval period. This was investigated by analysing macrofossils extracted from soil samples of middens, combined with phosphate analyses of the area around Norse farmsteads. In three field seasons 450 kg of soil was sampled from 12 Norse farmsteads together with samples for phosphate analysis covering an area of 12 ha from two farmsteads. The soil samples contained numerous seeds from wild plants giving information about the local vegetation. Charred grains and threshing waste of barley was found in samples from four sites, strongly indicating that barley was cultivated in Greenland by the Norse farmers. The phosphate analyses showed no sign of any deliberate manuring of the infields as high concentrations of phosphate were only found around the houses and pens.
Henriksen 2016 Ruralia
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... comm.). Large quantities of charred A. nodosum thallus fragments found in middens at sites in the Norse Greenlandic Eastern Settlement have been interpreted as evidence for the use of seaweed for fuel (Henriksen 2016), but given that the cultivation and processing of flax in Norse Greenland is known from archaeological and palaeoenvironmental evidence seaweed ash may have also been used in flax processing there (cf. Østergård 2009). ...
... The use of seaweed as fuel is often suggested as an interpretation for archaeological finds of charred fragments (e.g. Donaldson et al. 1981;Hunter 1986;Donaldson & Nye 1989;Dickson 1994;Dockrill et al. 1994;Adams et al. 2012;Murray & McCormick 2012;Bending 2014;Henriksen 2016) and the use specifically of A. nodosum as a fuel resource in Iceland is known from ethnohistorical sources (Hallsson 1964;Kristjánsson 1980). Seaweed was also used as fuel in ritual activities. ...
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Article
Full-text available
  • Dec 2018
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Article
Full-text available
  • Jul 2018
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... There are many examples of the use of seaweed from Iron Age and Viking Age in North west Europe. In a study of middens from Norse settlements in Greenland, carbonised seaweed was found as refuse from the households at almost all the investigated farms (Henriksen 2016). Sea weed used as fuel is known from the Faroe Islands (Bend ing 2014) and the Orkney Islands (Dickson 1994). ...
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Article
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Article
Full-text available
  • Mar 2023
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