Landnám is the Old Norse word (roughly translated as "land take") which refers to the Viking style of land management practices. These practices, based on traditional northern-European methods, were established in Iceland during the 9th century AD and Greenland in the 10th century. The direct transplant of inappropriate farming methods is widely considered responsible for the environmental degradation of Iceland and, to a lesser degree, Greenland.
Landnám and Viking Pastoralism
Norsemen using landnám brought along large numbers of grazing livestock, cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, and horses. As they had done in Scandinavia, they established both summer and winter pasturages and hayfields. Sheep and other livestock were taken to summer pastures from May to September, but for the remainder of the year were brought to the estate boundaries of individual farms. This grazing pattern is called the shieling system.
Unfortunately, unlike the soils in Norway and Sweden, the soils in Iceland and Greenland are the result of volcanic eruptions, and they are low in clay content and silt-sized, with a high organic content. This makes them far more susceptible to erosion than soils in the Viking homeland.
Progress of Landnám Damage
Extensive manuring in the first couple of years after settlement helped improve the thin soils, but after that, and even though the number and variety of livestock declined over the centuries, the environmental degradation began and grew worse. Damage was also done to bogs, resulting from attempts to irrigate and removal of peat, leading to a reduction of available plant species. The introduction of foreign species into the new Norse settlements has also been documented: in the Faroe Islands, 90 of the 400 documented plant species are considered Viking era imports.
The pasturing of livestock led to widespread vegetation removal. Further, burning and cutting of woodlands-primarily small stands of birches-for creation of hay fields, and for home and hearth construction, led to historic period soil erosion. New species of plants introduced from the Viking homeland competed with the existing flora for scarce resources. The situation was exacerbated by the onset of the Medieval Little Ice Age between about 1100-1300 AD, when temperatures dropped significantly, impacting the ability of the land, animals and people to survive.
Measured Damage from Landnam
Recent assessments of the environmental damage in Iceland indicate that at least 40% of the top soil has been removed since the 9th century; 73% of Iceland has been affected by soil erosion, 16.2% classified as severe or very severe.
Some researchers have argued that the climate change alone was enough to precipitate soil degradation, with the Viking landnám playing only a minor role. However, a recent study by Simpson et al. suggests that measurable erosion in winter pastures is more severe than other locations in Iceland. In some cases, areas used as winter pastures are now classed as subarctic deserts. That study points to damage inflicted by Viking farming practices.
Identifying Landnam
Archaeologists identify where landnám has been applied to a particular stretch of land by examining soil samples taken from a suspected location. Microscopic evidence of landnam agricultural efforts include pollen, charcoal and fungal spore data. Pollen can indicate changes in the types of plants present, such as when birch trees and brush are replaced by hay fields; charcoal represent fires to clear scrub or ash from domestic hearths used to fertilize fields; and fungal spores are from cattle dung used as manure or simply within a cattle pasture. See Schofield and Edwards 2011 for details.
Sources
This glossary entry is a part of the Guide to the Viking Age and part of the Dictionary of Archaeology.
Adderley WP, Simpson IA, and Vésteinsson O. 2008. Local-Scale Adaptations: A Modeled Assessment of Soil, Landscape, Microclimatic, and Management Factors in Norse Home-Field Productivities. Geoarchaeology 23(4):500â€"527.
Edwards KJ, Borthwick D, Cook G, Dugmore AJ, Mairs K-A, Church MJ, Simpson IA, and Adderley WP. 2005. A Hypothesis-Based Approach to Landscape Change in Suduroy, Faroe Islands. Human Ecology 33(5):621-650.
Edwards KJ, Schofield JE, and Mauquoy D. 2008. High resolution paleoenvironmental and chronological investigations of Norse landnám at Tasiusaq, Eastern Settlement, Greenland. Quaternary Research 69:1â€"15.
Erlendsson E, Edwards KJ, and Buckland PC. 2009. Vegetational response to human colonisation of the coastal and volcanic environments of Ketilsstaðir, southern Iceland. Quaternary Research 72(2):174-187.
Schofield J, and Edwards K. 2011. Grazing impacts and woodland management in Eriksfjord: Betula, coprophilous fungi and the Norse settlement of Greenland. Vegetation History and Archaeobotany 20(3):181-197.
Schofield JE, Edwards KJ, and Christensen C. 2008. Environmental impacts around the time of Norse landnám in the Qorlortoq valley, Eastern Settlement, Greenland. Journal of Archaeological Science 35(6):1643-1657.
Simpson IA, Gudmundsson G, Thomson AM, and Cluett J. 2004. Assessing the Role of Winter Grazing in Historic Land Degradation, Myvatnssveit, Northeast Iceland. Geoarchaeology 19(5):471â€"502.
Thomson AM, Simpson IA, and Brown JL. 2005. Sustainable Rangeland Grazing in Norse Faroe. Human Ecology 33(5):737-761.
Vickers K, Bending J, Buckland PC, Edwards KJ, Stummann Hansen S, and Cook G. 2005. Toftanes: The Paleoecology of a Faroese Landnam Farm. Human Ecology 33(5):658-710.
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