Christian Cemetery From Viking Age Iceland Reveals Strenuous Lives And Early Deaths

Legend has it that a Viking from the Faroe Islands settled Iceland around 825 AD. More settlers quickly followed, mostly the Norse who worshipped the Aesir, or gods like Thor and Odin. When Iceland adopted Christianity in 1000 AD by decree of the National Assembly, first the political elite and then the rest of the populace gave up their pagan customs. This change is seen clearly in Icelandic burial customs, which go from single graves made along farm boundaries to concentrated burials around a church. And new research on skeletons from these transitional cemeteries is revealing just how harsh an environment these early Icelanders had to deal with.

Bioarchaeologists Guđný Zoëga and Kimmarie Murphy write about life on the edge of the Arctic in their recent research article in the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology. Their analysis focuses on a small cemetery associated with a farm called Keldudalur in the Skagafjörđur region of northern Iceland. Dating to the early 11th century, Keldudalur has 52 burials over the course of a century, likely three to five generations of one farming family.

Early Icelanders, like their Norse forebears, were pastoral farmers, planting grain but also relying on sheep and cattle to get them through difficult times. With the advent of Christianity in the country, farm churches sprang up along with enclosed cemeteries. For bioarchaeologists, this change means better preservation of skeletons, as pagan burials tend to be spread out and shallow. The cemetery at Keldudalur is about average in size for this time period, but Zoëga and Murphy wanted to know if the health of this family was better or worse than comparable cemeteries, such as Hrísbrú, which showed high levels of violence and disease. Read More