Having never been to Iceland before I was particularly looking forward to visiting this country which had come so highly recommended. Even though I'm a forester, more used to working the leafy hollows and green hills of Ireland, I considered it would be an exciting change to experience the harsh, virtually treeless landscape of Iceland.
I must admit though, that being a member of the PARABOW team, looking at reconstructing ancient wooden buildings, I couldn't help wondering just how frequent wooden buildings had been in a land where growing good quality timber must be an impossible task. Okay, so the island once had twenty three percent primary forest cover (mainly Downy birch), but this post glacial resource would not have taken much plundering to reduce it to the few percent that remain today. Surely then the PARABOW project could learn more about pre-medieval timber utilisation by excavating long houses in Denmark or Saxon settlements in Germany. Not so! I believe that the Project group, both individually and collectively, learnt a lot from this trip and considered the use of wood from a different perspective having visited Iceland.
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Driftwood harvested in Iceland |
Only where a product is so scarce is its use fully appreciated. The ability to make the most of limited natural resources is a common thread running through much of traditional Icelandic life. This ability to live off their rugged land has given the Icelandic people a very clear understanding of natural processes; man is an integral part of the ecosystem, (not something we can claim elsewhere in Western Europe!).
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Icelandic forest |
To quote one example of this in practice, our Icelandic craftsman, Gudjon, a man of many talents, from a remote corner of Southwest Iceland, was telling us one evening how he 'farms' Eider ducks. The process whereby Eider Down is collected however, can only loosely be described as farming. Simply man plays a defensive role during the natural migratory / breeding pattern of these birds, building stone nests and placing stakes around them to deter Gulls and Ravens, thus he is rewarded with a natural by-product - Eider Down.
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Turf House, Iceland |
Traditional Icelandic buildings are a prime example of man's oneness with the land. The use of turf, stone and wood clearly illustrate this. As used today, the wood in pre-medieval Icelandic settlements was likely to have been a mixture of native birch and non-native driftwood. We are not sure how extensively the native Birch resource was used, was its sustainable management appreciated by the Vikings?, was it used to make charcoal?, maybe its use was limited to the making of utensils. Notably on the excavation site at Geirsstadir birch wattle fencing was not used to enclose the farmstead, rather turf walls were erected, even though the construction of these would have been considerably more labour intensive and less flexible. This would seem to indicate an appreciation of surrounding Birch woodland existing at that time, certainly any shelter would have been welcome.
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Visitors at the driftwood pile |
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Iceland Picnic |
Driftwood on the other hand, floating up the fjord, on its long journey from the great Boreal forests, must have
seemed like a gift from the Gods. Relatively large diameter logs of Pine or Larch could be easily processed when
wet and used for all manner of structural purposes. A small piece of this 'exotic' timber has been excavated from a
post hole, on the site of the wooden church at Porarinsstadir, and is currently being analysed by
Over the initial stages of PARABOW we hope to deduce the relative proportions and exact uses of the timbers, both native and exotic, found in these settlements. Studying the ancient use of wood in such an extreme environment as Iceland promises to give us a much fuller picture of Nordic settlements, the factors and cultures which influenced them, and provide an important point of reference for further PARABOW projects. We hope that by reconstructing the settlement at Geirsstadir we will not only be creating a living archaeological feature, but also understanding and re-applying the principles and techniques used at this outer limit of pre-medieval civilisation.
Words and pictures by Jerry Hawe