Social-Ecological Resilience in the Viking-Age to Early-Medieval Faroe Islands

City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 9-2015 Social-Ecological Resilience in the Viking-Age to Early-Medieval Faroe Islands Seth Brewington Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/870 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] SOCIAL-ECOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE VIKING-AGE TO EARLY-MEDIEVAL FAROE ISLANDS by SETH D. BREWINGTON A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in Anthropology in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York 2015 © 2015 SETH D. BREWINGTON All Rights Reserved ii This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in Anthropology to satisfy the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. _Thomas H. McGovern__________________________________ ____________________ _____________________________________________________ Date Chair of Examining Committee _Gerald Creed_________________________________________ ____________________ _____________________________________________________ Date Executive Officer _Andrew J. Dugmore____________________________________ _Sophia Perdikaris______________________________________ _George Hambrecht_____________________________________ Supervisory Committee THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK iii Abstract SOCIAL-ECOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE VIKING-AGE TO EARLY-MEDIEVAL FAROE ISLANDS by Seth D. Brewington Adviser: Professor Thomas H. McGovern This dissertation aims to evaluate the development and maintenance of social-ecological resilience during the settlement-period (ca. 9th through 11th centuries CE) in the Faroe Islands. In particular, the core objectives include the identification of the key social and natural variables involved, the examination of how these variables contributed to overall resilience, and the investigation of the initiation of the Faroese domestic economy. This research focuses primarily on an analysis of the 9th through 13th century archaeofaunal assemblage from the site of Undir Junkarinsfløtti, located on the island of Sandoy. This analysis represents the first detailed study of the Faroese settlement-period domestic economy. In addition to the Undir Junkarinsfløtti archaeofaunal data, the research presented here draws from a wide range of archaeological, paleoenvironmental, and documentary evidence. These Faroese data are compared with contemporaneous datasets from elsewhere in the North Atlantic, including Iceland, Greenland, the Northern and Western Isles of Scotland, and western coastal Norway. Interpretation of this evidence is informed by a theoretical approach rooted in historical ecology, iv with an emphasis on the dynamic and dialectic nature of human-environment interactions, particularly as these relate to social-ecological resilience. This study suggests that the overall resilience of the Faroese social-ecological system can largely be attributed not only to the maintenance of a broad-based domestic economy that was heavily subsidized by the sustained exploitation of robust natural resources, but also to the development of a collaborative, community-based approach to resource management and use. In particular, these factors contributed to robustness against food shortfalls. The available evidence suggests that this resilient economic regime was initiated by a culturally-hybridized, Hiberno- Norse population. v To my parents, David and Janet Brewington vi Acknowledgements I could not have completed this dissertation without the support of a great many people, and while it is not possible to list each of them here, I would like to briefly acknowledge some of the individuals and institutions to whom I owe thanks. To those not explicitly named here, I nevertheless offer my sincerest gratitude. I am very fortunate to have had over the years the support and guidance of Tom McGovern, my dissertation adviser. I have Tom to thank for many of the excellent opportunities I received as a graduate student, not least of which was the chance to join the Undir Junkarinsfløtti project, which became the basis of my dissertation research. One of the many important lessons I learned from working with Tom is the value of interdisciplinary collaboration, of combining talents and resources in order to tell bigger and more interesting stories. Tom’s boundless enthusiasm and hard work have been a tremendous inspiration to me. In addition, I am extremely grateful to Andy Dugmore for his strong support and encouragement over the years. Even well before he was formally a member of my dissertation committee, Andy regularly offered to discuss my research progress. Andy’s intellectual vigor, knack for developing novel hypotheses, and thoughtful suggestions throughout the writing process have been tremendously helpful in the completion of this dissertation. Special thanks for their efforts on my dissertation committee are also due Sophia Perdikaris and George Hambrecht. Both Sophia and George provided very useful feedback to the various drafts of my thesis, and Sophia in particular has been extremely supportive throughout my time in the graduate program. vii I owe a tremendous amount of thanks to my Faroese colleagues, without whose cooperation and support this dissertation would have been impossible. Símun Arge has been a generous and gracious host and collaborator, and it is thanks to his initiative that the Undir Junkarinsfløtti project was carried out in the first place. I am also very grateful to Helgi Michelsen for his expertise and hard work in the field, as well as his generosity and patience toward the sometimes-obnoxious foreign archaeologists (myself included) who worked with him each field season. Gracious and welcoming, too, were the people of Sandur, and I sincerely appreciate the support of the community in the excavations at Undir Junkarinsfløtti, Á Sondum, and other sites around Sandoy. Many thanks are also due the landowner at Undir Junkarinsfløtti, Harald Jensen, for his enthusiastic support of the project over several field seasons. I had the pleasure of working with many wonderful and skilled people on the Undir Junkarinsfløtti excavations from 2004 to 2006. Special thanks are due the project leaders, Símun Arge, Mike Church, Julie Bond, Steve Dockrill, and Ragnar Edvardsson. The expertise and professionalism brought by each of these individuals was an immense benefit not only to the project, but also to my own development as a North Atlantic archaeologist; I am truly fortunate to have had the opportunity to learn from each of them. I would also like to thank the fieldwork team members, each of whom were a complete joy to work with: Ramona Harrison, Juha Martilla, Aaron Kendall, Bobby Friel, Anthony Mustchin, Julia Cussans, Helgi Michelsen, Zoe Outram, Dan Bashford, Margretha Jensen, and Louise Brown. Thanks as well to Símun Arge and Tom McGovern for their logistical and advisory support, and to the proprietors of both the bakery and beer shop in Sandur for boosting overall morale, via vinarbreyð and Føroya Bjór, respectively. Prior to my own involvement in the project, an initial, relatively small-scale excavation at Undir Junkarinsfløtti was carried out in 2003 by a team that included Símun Arge, Tom McGovern, viii Mike Church, Jim Woollett, Kerry-Anne Mairs, and Matt Brown. The professionalism of this initial team was instrumental in setting the stage for the larger-scale 2004 to 2006 research initiative, and I wish to thank each of them for their hard work. Financial support for the Undir Junkarinsfløtti project was provided by the National Science Foundation Arctic Social Sciences Program, the Leverhulme Trust “Landscapes circum- Landnám” program, Føroya Fornminnissavn (Faroes National Museum), Granskingarráðið (Faroese Research Council), the CUNY Northern Science and Education Center, Anadarko Petroleum Company, BP Amoco Explorations Ltd., University of Bradford, Durham University, and the City University of New York. This dissertation benefits hugely from the work of specialists involved in various aspects of paleoenvironmental research in Sandoy and throughout the Faroes in recent years. Radiocarbon and paleobotanical analyses for the Undir Junkarinsfløtti project were overseen by Mike Church. Philippa Ascough provided stable isotope analysis and studied marine reservoir effects on radiocarbon assays. Studies of human impacts on the Sandoy landscape were carried out by Ian Lawson, Kerry-Anne Mairs, Ian Simpson, Paul Adderley, and Amanda Thomson. I wish to particularly acknowledge Kerry-Anne Mairs, whose research on human ecodynamics in the Faroes in many ways provided an important springboard for the approach taken in this dissertation. I owe many thanks to Tom McGovern, Jim Woollett, and Colin Amundsen for their generous and patient guidance as I learned the ropes working in the archaeofaunal lab at Hunter College. I learned a tremendous amount from each of them, and am a better zooarchaeologist today because of their example. My experience in graduate school was successful in large part because of the excellent education I received as an undergraduate. I was fortunate to have had teachers who, through their ix enthusiasm, piqued my interest in science and the humanities.

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