Road Trip Through History: 871 +/-2
In 2001, an Icelandic construction crew was excavating a basement for a new hotel in the historic district of Reykjavik when they made a major archaeological discovery which included not only the oldest relics of human habitation in the area, which date from before the “official” settlement day of 871CE, plus or minus a year or two*, but a complete tenth century long house. Today the site is displayed in its original location** as part of a small but spectacular multimedia museum. Ghostly videos of everyday scenes from Viking life play out across a panoramic display of the modern Icelandic landscape–not only a cool effect, but illuminating as well. Interactive exhibits show how a long house was built and used.
My takeaways?
- Long houses were a lot smaller than the sagas would lead you to believe. Roistering must have been done shoulder to shoulder. No wonder fights broke out so often. ***
- Tephro chronology: a form of archaeological dating that uses the relationship of finds to layers of volcanic ash. The layers of ash that are part of Iceland’s soil have been tied to written accounts of historical eruptions and layers of ash recovered from the Greenland ice cap.**** One layer in particular is important for dating early sites in Iceland: a two-colored layer of ash dating from around 871 CE, known as the “settlement layer”. Artifacts found below the settlement layer (like the bit of wall found in 2001) date from before the first known settlement of Iceland.
- Icelanders have mad museum building skills.
If you can only visit one museum in Iceland, the Settlement Exhibit at 871 +/-2 is the one to see.
* Hence the name of the museum
**Literally under the hotel.
*** I had a similar revelation at the much less interesting National Museum of Iceland, where the outline of a Viking ship on the floor made it clear just how small the dreaded dragon boats must have been. Not a ship I’d want to go to sea in.
****Evidently layers of ice can be dated like tree rings. Archaeology gets more fascinating all the time.
Road Trip Through History: Reykholt
In the thirteenth century, Reykholt was one of the three major estates controlled by Snorri Sturluson, poet, chieftain, and would-be king of Iceland. Reykholt was wealthy estate and luxurious by the standards of the time. Snorri literally built a house fit for a king, planning renovations inspired by the palace of the Norwegian king. His renovations including the expansion of a bathing pool fed by a nearby hot spring into the medieval equivalent of a hot tub.*
Snorri’s hot tub at Reykholt
Reykholt was also the site where Snorri met a violent end in 1241 at the hands of men who supported Snorri’s former sons-in-law against him in the struggle for the control of Iceland. Snorri received a warning that Gissur of Haukadale and Kolbein the Young were plotting against him; he doesn’t seem to have cared. On September 22, Gissur’s men entered Reykholt unopposed and broke into Snorri’s sleeping quarters. The elderly poet jumped out of bed and ran into the neighboring building, unarmed and dressed only in a nightshirt. He took refuge in a cellar storeroom while Gissur’s seventy men searched the house. When Gissur discovered Snorri’s hiding place, he sent five of his men down into the cellar where they struck him down.
Today, little of Snorri’s estate remains.** Reykholt is home to Snorristofa, a research institution devoted to promoting research into the Snorri, the sagas, and medieval Iceland. For those of us who have no need of their small, excellent library or their writers’ cottage, the institute offers a well-designed exhibit of the major themes of Snorri’s life: in many ways the cliff notes version of Song of the Vikings.
*Hot springs were a big deal in medieval Iceland. Not only did they provide a reliable heat source in a cold place with limited access to wood for fires, they also provided warm water for cooking, bathing and washing clothes. More important, if less obvious to a modern American, control of a hot spring had serious agricultural benefits. Warm water meadows meant grass sprouted sooner in the spring and stayed green longer, making a richer hay crop and the ability to keep more of the horses, sheep and cattle by which wealth (and survival) were measured.
They aren’t kidding when they call them hot springs!
Today hot springs not only provide geothermal heat and cheap electricity, they also power greenhouses–an astonishing thing in a place where historically all vegetables have been imported. One of the unexpected highlights of the trip was the stop at a farmstand that was selling greenhouse-grown strawberries. 
Really excellent strawberries. My Own True Love and I ate a pint of them in the van on the way to the next stop. Okay, I’ll admit it. He let me have more than my share.
**Even the hot tub is a reconstruction.
Road Trip Through History: The Settlement Center
As I’ve mentioned before, Iceland is a small place and much of it is mountain desert–think the Rockies without the pines. In what passes for arable land, the present lives on top of and alongside the past. Dig the foundation for a new building and the odds are that you will find the foundation of an old building, and possibly an even older building under that. Not every historical site or archaeological dig can be turned into a museum. With the exception of Thingvellir the idea of a Gettysburg-style expanse of land is impossible. Even historical markers as we know them are few and far between.
It makes for a different type of history-nerd holiday. For much of this trip we saw the places where things happened but not remains or even visual representations of the events. The site of an inland harbor, and where it stood in relation to a major estate, but no reconstruction of Viking ships in harbor.* The place where a famous battle took place, but no maps of troop movements. Instead of events, we’ve concentrated on the relationship between the nature of the land, its resources, a way of life, and the way it appeared in the Icelandic sagas. Why hot springs were important. Why men didn’t fight on horseback. Why the “long fire” in a chieftain’s feasting hall was a bed of coals rather than a roaring blaze. Quite frankly, if it weren’t for our guide, Nancy Marie Brown,–writer, Viking expert, and fan of all things Icelandic– we wouldn’t have a clue what we were looking at or why it mattered. **
At the end of our first day in rural Iceland the soles of my boots separated from the top. duct tape to the rescue!
All of which is a long way of saying that I was very pleased to get to the Settlement Center at Borgarnes. I was ready for a museum. The Settlement Center is a small museum with two well-crafted exhibits. One covers the discovery and settlement of Iceland by Vikings from Norway, a period several centuries before the focus of our tour. The second tells the story of one of the most colorful of the Icelandic sagas, the Egils Saga: complete with a gloomy poet-beserker hero, battles, love, betrayal, a wicked sorceress/queen,*** and hidden treasure.
At first I was disappointed to learn that both exhibits required an audio tour, a technology with which I have a long-standing hate-hate relationship. In fact, the audio and physical exhibits worked together beautifully, like 3-dimensional picture books for adults.
Here are some of the details that caught my imagination:
- Early settlers threw carved high columns, intended to be part of their main hall, overboard and settled where they came to shore. This seems like a large-scale version of divination by tossing rune sticks.
- Problematic relationships with the kings of Norway were a constant theme throughout the Viking period.
- A woman could claim as much land as she could drive a cart around in a day.
While we were in Borgarnes we stopped at a second museum that proved to be an unexpected delight. The exhibit Children Throughout a Century is a photographic essay of Icelandic children in the twentieth century, punctuated with physical artifacts. This is the sort of exhibit that can go sadly wrong–and often does. The Borganes Museum clearly has a top-flight curator in charge. Instead of a small collection of local photographs and worn-out toys, dutifully identified with name and place, Children Throughout a Century was a full room of uncaptioned photographs, displayed floor to ceiling in a way that showed changes from decade to decade without diminishing the impact of individual photographs. Artifacts–some directly related to childhood, others emblematic of a way of life–were displayed in shadow boxes hidden behind related photographs on hinged doors. From an American perspective it was fascinating to compare and contrast Icelandic images with those I carry in my head. (And a bit of a shock to realize how dated the images from the years of my childhood looked.) No Viking connection, but definitely worth seeing if you have a chance.
*I’ve written about the design of Viking ships a number of times (though not here on the Margins), but now I understand the importance of that design with my gut and not just my head. They were swift, narrow-hulled ships with true keels and shallow drafts that could sail long distances in the open sea using either oars or sails. Unlike the wider, deeper-hulled ships of western Europe, they could land men upstream from the mouth of a river or on the beach of a small island. The symmetry of the design, with an identical bow and stern and the mast at the exact center, meant the ship could go in either direction. Being able to withdraw from shore without turning around meant the ships could leave as quickly as they landed, increasing the blitzkrieg feel of a Viking raid.
**The dates for next year’s tour are already posted. Sign up now.
***Who learned her magic from the Lapps in Finland–a throwaway line that made me want to know more.
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A LAGNIAPPE: For those of you who don’t see a history-nerd trip to Iceland in your immediate future (or even those of you who do), I strongly recommend the video series Journey’s End as a introduction to the link between the sagas and history.