Hofstaðir is the name of a Viking settlement located in northeastern Iceland, where archaeological and oral history reports a pagan temple was located. Recent excavations suggest instead that Hofstaðir was primarily a chief's settlement, with a large hall used for ritual feasting and events. Radiocarbon dates on animal bone range between 1030-1170 RCYBP.
The Viking Age site of Hofstaðir included a large hall-like building, several adjacent pit house dwellings, a church (built ca 1100) and a boundary wall enclosing a 4.5 acre home field, where hay was grown and dairy cattle were kept over the winter. The hall is the largest Norse longhouse yet excavated in Iceland.
Artifacts recovered from Hofstaðir include several silver, copper, and bone pins, combs and dress items; spindlewhorls, loomweights, and whetstones, and 23 knives. Hofstaðir was founded about AD 950 and continues to be occupied today. During the Viking Age, the town had a fairly robust number of people occupying the site during the spring and summer and fewer people living there during the rest of the year.
Animals represented by bones at Hofstaðir include domestic cattle, pigs, sheep, goats, and horses; fish, shellfish, birds, and limited numbers of seal, whale and arctic fox. Bones of a domestic cat were discovered within one of the house ruins.
Ritual and Hofstaðir
The site's largest building is a hall, typical for Viking sites, except that it is twice as long as an average Viking hallâ€"38 meters long, with a separate room at one end identified as a shrine. A huge cooking pit is located in the southern end.
The association of the site of Hofstaðir as a pagan temple or a large feasting hall with a shrine, comes from the recovery of at least 23 individual cattle skulls, located in three distinct deposits.
Cutmarks on the skulls and neck vertebrae suggest that the cows were killed and beheaded while still standing; weathering of the bone suggests that the skulls were displayed outside for a number of months or years after the soft tissue had decayed away.
Ritual at Hofstaðir
The cattle skulls are in three clusters, an area on the west exterior side containing 8 skulls; 14 skulls inside a room adjoining to the great hall (the 'shrine'), and one single skull located next to the main entry way. All of the skulls were found within wall and roof collapse areas, suggesting that they had been suspended from the roof rafters. Radiocarbon dates on five of the skulls the bone suggest that the animals died between 50-100 years apart, with the latest dated about AD 1000.
Excavators Lucas and McGovern believe that Hofstaðir ended abruptly in the mid-11th century, about the same time a church was built 140 meters away.
Archaeology and Hofstaðir
Hofstaðir was excavated by Daniel Bruun in 1908; by Olaf Olsen in the mid-1960s, and by Gavin Lucas and Thomas McGovern in the early 21st century.
Sources
This glossary entry is a part of the Guide to the Viking Age and part of the Dictionary of Archaeology.
Adderley, W. P., Ian A. Simpson, and Orri Vésteinsson 2008 Local-Scale Adaptations: A Modeled Assessment of Soil, Landscape, Microclimatic, and Management Factors in Norse Home-Field Productivities. Geoarchaeology 23(4):500â€"527.
Lawson, Ian T., et al. 2007 Environmental impacts of the Norse settlement: palaeoenvironmental data from Mývatnssveit, northern Iceland. Boreas 36:1-19.
Lucas, Gavin, ed. 2003. Hofstaðir 2002: Interim Report. Fornleifastofnun Ãslands, ReykjavÃk. Free pdf download.
Lucas, Gavin and Thomas McGovern 2007 Bloody Slaughter: Ritual Decapitation and Display At the Viking Settlement of Hofstaðir, Iceland. European Journal of Archaeology 10(1):7-30.
McGovern, Thomas H., Sophia Perdikaris, Arni Einarsson, and Jane Sidell 2006 Coastal connections, local fishing, and sustainable egg harvesting: patterns of Viking Age inland wild resource use in Myvatn district, Northern Iceland. Environmental Archaeology 11(2):187-205.
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