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Farming Practices in Pre-Modern Iceland

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Farming Practices in Pre-Modern Iceland View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by University of Birmingham Research Archive, E-theses Repository FARMING PRACTICES IN PRE-MODERN ICELAND by BERNADETTE MCCOOEY A thesis submitted to the University of Birmingham for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of History School of History and Cultures College of Arts and Law University of Birmingham March 2017 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. ABSTRACT This thesis re-evaluates farming practices in Iceland up to c.1600. Advancing Þorvaldur Thoroddsen’s early twentieth century work, I incorporate modern archaeological investigations and recent scholarship to advance the discussions of Iceland’s livestock economy. The thesis draws on a range of written sources, including literature, legal texts and the máldagar (church-charters), as well as archaeological disciplines and environmental sciences to consider the whole process of farming. It examines neglected aspects of animal husbandry and, in the process, challenges some assumptions about practices and suggests new avenues for research. I start with a re-examination of farm buildings and pasture, both on and off the farm to give a more holistic view of fodder acquisition. The following chapter evaluates the textual sources for the economic value of livestock and reveals stability in the relative livestock values, though the kúgildi varied in value over the centuries. The next chapter addresses herd sizes on farms and the composition of these herds to gain an insight into the purpose of these animals, not just their numbers. No attempt is made to calculate livestock population estimates because of the sporadic nature of the sources. The fourth chapter utilises the vast corpus of máldagar to analyse the farming economies of church-farms (staðir and bændakirkjur), including patterns of livestock keeping based on the churches’ characteristics. It then examines the changing nature of livestock farming between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries, on local, regional and countrywide scales. The final chapter considers livestock products and consumption beyond the much discussed milk, meat and wool economies. I also examine the evidence for products such as traction and horses for more than their meat. Cattle and sheep provide the core focus, though horses, pigs and goats are included where sources permit. This incorporation allows a fuller understanding of the interactions between different aspects of farming. The traditional narrative usually frames Icelandic farming as experiencing a continuous decline in conditions and productivity over the centuries. Yet this has been increasingly questioned in recent scholarship. I argued here that Icelandic farming generally moved towards a wool-producing economy in an attempt to adapt to changing conditions. Masked by this wool economy generalisation, however, were a diversity of farming practices. It is only by examining the i complexities of these practices do we discover that Icelandic farming was not declining, but adapting to the challenges of this period. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to thank the Economic and Social Research Council for the opportunity to undertake this project. And the Viking Society for Northern Research for the Peter Foote Memorial Bursary that greatly enhanced my understanding of Icelandic history. My personal thanks goes to Dr. Chris Callow for his patience and wisdom. Thanks also to my two examiners, Dr. Miriam Muller and Dr. Guðrún Sveinbjarnardóttir, for their advice and suggestions. And to my family, especially my mother, for all their support. I give my unreserved thanks to the fellow researchers at the University of Birmingham, particularly those in the ERI and Westmere, past and present, for their endless encouragement. To J.R.R. for the moral support. I am grateful to all those who read and gave feedback on the drafts, and to Ian for assisting me with charts and tables. To those too numerous to mention, near and far, whom I have meet along the way and to those who offered help and advice throughout this research. Þakka öllum á Íslandi kærlega fyrir að kenna mér svona mikið. Sérstakar þakkir fá: Ásta, Bæring, Mari, Sesselja, Þórdís, Benni, Bergvin, Anna, Ísak, Karin, Bogga, Gestur, María og Indriði. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS List of tables and figures Introduction…………………..…………………………………………………………………...… 1 Chapter One: Farm buildings and pasture ………………………….……………………………... 30 Chapter Two: The value of livestock ………………………………..……………………………. 77 Chapter Three: Population, herd sizes and composition…………..……….…………………….. 105 Chapter Four: The livestock economy of Icelandic churches from the twelfth to sixteenth centuries ……………………………………………………………………………………………………. 147 Chapter Five: Products and consumption …………………………..……………………….…… 196 Conclusion ……………………………………………………………..………………...………. 233 Appendices One: Summary of zooarchaeology by site………………………………….…………….. 241 Two: Summary of livestock terminology ……………………………….……………….. 247 Three: Máldagar database (CD) Four: Maps (CD) Bibliography ……………………………………………………………………………..………. 250 iv LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES Tables Table 1 Comparison in domestic livestock values for Grágás, Jónsbók, and the Alþing and Árnes price-lists. Table 2: Church-farms with over 50% non-milking cattle recorded in extant máldagar. Table 3: The average number of horses recorded for church-farms in máldagar. Table 4: Horse herds of more than thirty horses recorded in Diplomatarium Islandicum. Table 5: Various livestock figures calculated by the author, with figure calculated by Helgi Þorláksson (H) and Þorvaldur Thoroddsen (Þ), for the confiscation of Guðmundur Arason’s six farms in 1446, DI IV, pp.684-690. Table 6: Average and total numbers of cattle and sheep in máldagabækur (rounded to whole numbers). Table 7: Average and total numbers of cattle and sheep in máldagabækur (rounded to whole numbers) adjusted for ownership of entire heimaland where heimaland ownership is known. Table 8: The number of church-farms with extant máldagar listing cattle and sheep for both pre-1318 and the sixteenth century. Table 9: Cattle:sheep ratio on church-farms by region where data on both sheep and cattle numbers available, for pre 1318 and the sixteenth century. Table 10: The number of church-farms with máldagar listing cattle and sheep for the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries. Table 11: The change in cattle and sheep numbers on selected church-farms, and mean numbers for the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries. Table 12: Eyjafjörður case studies Table 13: Hornafjörður and Suður Múlasýsla case studies Table 14: Land and Flói case studies Table 15: Borgarfjörður case studies Table 16: Ísafjarðarsýsla case studies v Figures Figure 1: Graph showing the combined value of milking stock (cows and ewes) in kúgildi against the number of clerics recorded for Hólar in 1318. Each diamond represents one máldagar where data is available. Six ewes are valued as one kígildi. Figure 2: Graph showing the number of clerics against the number of cows for Hólar in 1394. Each diamond represents one máldagar where data is available. Figure 3: Graph showing the regional variation of cattle:sheep ratio where data is available for Skálholt in 1397. See database in Appendix Three for individual values. Total of 156 church-farms. Figure 4: Graph showing the cattle:sheep ratio against the proportion of heimaland owned for Skálholt diocese in 1397. See database in Appendix Three for individual values. Total of 96 church- farms. Figure 5: Graph showing the numbers of cows in relation to the number of clerics on church-farms for Skálholt in 1397. Each dot represents one máldagar where data is available. Figure 6: Graph showing the total value of milking stock (kúgildi) depending on proportion of heimaland ownership for Skálholt in 1397. Six ewes are valued as one kúgildi. Total of 106 church- farms. vi INTRODUCTION 1.1 SCOPE OF THESIS The Settlement of Iceland began in the ninth century, and the population relied on farming, in part, for their continued survival. The last great work on this topic, Lýsing Íslands, was published in the early twentieth century, yet much scholarship has been undertaken to advance our understanding of farming since then.1 This present study is an in-depth, critical examination of pastoral farming and the advances made since the 1920s. It re-assesses the written evidence and integrates archaeological material that was unavailable a hundred years ago.2 Another multi-volume work, Landbúnaðarsaga Íslands, has been published since this thesis commenced but it stops short of examining the full range of farming topics that the sources provide evidence for, and so is not as in-depth as this present study.3 Both of these works will be discussed in more detail below. The chronological scope of this thesis is from the Settlement, commonly acknowledged to have begun from the late ninth century, to the late sixteenth century. It will provide a view of animal husbandry on an extended
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