Barraclough, E.R.

(2021) 'Trees, woodlands, and forests in Old

Norse-Icelandic culture’, JEGP, Journal of English and Germanic
Philology, 120 (3), pp. 281-301.
Official URL: https://www.muse.jhu.edu/article/798401

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 Trees, Woodlands and Forests Old Norse-Icelandic Culture

INTRODUCTION
We live in an unprecedented era of climate change, mass wildlife extinction and largescale

deforestation. On an existential, practical and ethical level, this is the great contemporary challenge

of our time. When the future feels so uncertain and the present so critical, one may well question

the value of studying the past. Yet these global changes, by their very nature, cannot be understood

in an ahistorical vacuum. In taking a deeper chronological view, it is possible to shed light on how

past human cultures have impacted on the physical world around them and responded to these

changes both practically and psychologically. By interrogating the past, we can better understand

our current circumstances, and in doing so perhaps provide both hope and forewarning for the

future.

Medieval Iceland offers a unique perspective in this respect, since it was—to all intents

and purposes—uninhabited before the 9th century landnám (“settlement”, lit. “land-taking”) by

settlers predominantly from Norway and the British Isles. Such unusual circumstances invite a

number of important questions: How did the first generations of Icelanders respond to their

physical surroundings? How did they shape and alter the world around them? How was their own

view of the world affected in return? The following analysis seeks to address these questions

through a particular case study: the representation of trees and woodlands in the Old Norse-

Icelandic textual tradition, and the Íslendingasögur (“Sagas of Icelanders”) in particular. Through

it, I aim to explore how medieval Icelanders thought about and engaged with the physical

environment around them, as well as the broader non-human natural world beyond their homeland.

At the heart of the discussion is the nature of the connections between geographical space—both

real and imagined—and the way humans think about the world they inhabit, their place within it,

Page 1 of 31
their present and their past. Beyond the medieval Icelandic context, the analysis has broader

implications for our understanding of how historical cultures have engaged with threshold or

marginal geographical spaces, particularly those undergoing modification as a result of human

activity.

Trees and woodlands offer a particularly suitable focus for such a case study, not only

because they were so fundamental to the functioning of medieval Norse societies (e.g. for heating,

charcoal-production, ship construction, building materials, tools, storage containers, pannage,

food) but also because of the long-held view that Iceland was deforested extensively in the first

few decades of settlement. This picture is now undergoing scientific and archaeological

modification, as will be discussed below. Nevertheless, the question of how a culture continued to

think about trees even as woodland resources diminished remains significant. In the following, I

seek to demonstrate that attitudes towards wood, woodlands, and wooden products in the

Íslendingasögur reflect to a large extent the reality of resource availability and use in medieval

Iceland, with recent developments in archaeology illuminating the sagas’ testimonies in new and

important ways. In the case of these texts, the key consideration will be, “land—its quality,

organization, and management”, for, as a recent study by Guðrún Sveinbjarnardóttir et al. notes,

this is “an aspect of society-environment relationships that has received little attention until

recently in studies of landnám”.1 By juxtaposing archaeological and/or scientific evidence for tree

presence and woodland resources in medieval Iceland with the way in which the sagas depict this

aspect of the physical world, it is possible to see a remarkable degree of concord between the two

very different data sets.

In Old Norse texts, more than one word was used to describe areas of land covered in trees,

particularly skógr, viðr and mǫrk. As might be expected, all had their nuances and cultural

connotations, but it is important not to translate them in a way that means they take on additional

Page 2 of 31
layers of meaning and interpretation that did not exist originally. Skógr seems to be the word most

frequently employed, and I have translated this as ‘woodland’ or ‘a wood’, which is also the

primary translation in Cleasby-Vigfússon.2 Elsewhere, and deriving ultimately from the Proto-

Germanic *wiðuz, the Old Norse word viðr shares its etymological roots with the modern English

“wood”, which is used in a similar manner (for a tree, an area of land where trees grow collectively,

or the physical material from which trees are made).3 Finally, mǫrk has more complex origins,

stemming from the Proto-Germanic *markō, and cognate with OE mearc (“limit, term, boundary,

sign”), Goth marka (“region, border”), OFris merke (“boundary”), OS marka (“boundary,

district”) and OHG marca (“boundary”).4 As is noted in Cleasby-Vigfússon, the association seems

to have come about because “in olden times vast and dense forests often formed the border-land

between two countries”.5 Thus, in the texts explored below, it is perhaps unsurprising that mǫrk is

used primarily in the context of large Norwegian tracts of woodland with high-quality timber,

under the control of kings and jarls.6 Modern English makes similar distinctions between “wood”

and “forest”, with the former either used to describe an area of land where trees grow collectively,

or the physical material from which trees are made. “Forest”, on the other hand, is a more culturally

and historically loaded word, with uncertain etymological origins and likely roots in the

Merovingian period.7 As Oliver Rackham emphasized, “the word Forest does not imply

woodland”, for medieval forests in both post-Conquest England and on the Continent comprised

not only wooded areas but also heath, moorland, fenland, scrubland, and dwellings.8 Yet today,

“forest” often conjures images of a vast, dense treescape, and therefore is an appropriate translation

for mǫrk despite not in fact sharing common etymological roots. It is worth pointing out that the

majority of examples quoted below use skógr or viðr, particularly in the case of texts with an

Icelandic setting, and these I have attempted to translate consistently.

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 IMAGINATION AND REALITY, TIME AND SPACE
Human engagement with the non-human natural world is a multifaceted process. Different

layers, both physical and psychological, are conjured when humans experience, imagine, and make

sense of their surroundings. This includes not only what they can see, touch, and make use of, but

also the world—real or imagined—beyond their direct experience. Therefore, it is necessary to

consider both the imaginative place of woodlands and trees in the textual tradition, and the ways

in which the corpus reflects a tangible, practical and experiential engagement with the Icelandic

topography. In this sense, the matter under consideration here feeds into the still-evolving

conversation in saga scholarship regarding the relative historical and literary merits of the

Íslendingsögur.9 A re-rehearsal of this conversation and the various positions adopted over the

years is beyond the scope of this present analysis, except to make the following observations. The

sagas in their surviving forms are, in many ways, literary artefacts with debatable degrees of

historical accuracy, at least in the sense that we understand the concept today. Yet it is also likely

that on many levels they reflect the lived experience of medieval Icelanders at the time of saga

writing (i.e. 13th century onwards), and the way in which they engaged with the physical world

around them. What is harder to ascertain is the extent to which the sagas preserve orally transmitted

information that was passed down the generations from the first decades and centuries of the

landnám (i.e. 9th century onwards), and what modifications and transformations such information

might have undergone over time. Such a state of affairs is relevant to an analysis such as this, since

it is concerned with multiple historical timeframes (i.e. the earlier period during which the sagas

are set up to the later period during which they were recorded) as well as mapping changes over

time (i.e. the decline in woodlands throughout the medieval period). Nevertheless, despite the

difficulties, in many ways these texts are as close as we will come to an understanding of how this

medieval culture experienced their existence in the world.

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 In light of the inherent methodological challenges of the source material, the theoretical

ideas that inform this analysis can be couched within a series of broader, multidisciplinary

frameworks. The first concerns notions of landscape, space and place as developed by

archaeologists, anthropologists and human geographers over recent decades.10 The multi-temporal

nature of landscapes and physical environments is a tenet that underpins much of this analysis. As

the anthropologist and archaeologist Barbara Bender has argued, landscapes are “always

polyvalent and multivocal”, for there is a “historicity and spatiality to people’s engagement with

the world around them”.11 Such a “plurality of place … always in the making” can be seen in many

Íslendingasögur descriptions of the physical world—including those elements of the physical

world under consideration here—in which multiple chronological layers are incorporated into the

texts.12 After all, as Bender suggests, while cultures “move towards a sense of place and belonging

[…] they creatively work the past into a volatile present”.13 While her comments pertain to the

ways in which people engage with landscapes, in the case of medieval Iceland they might be said

to apply as much to the textual record of the Íslendingasögur themselves, which do not belong

exclusively to one time period or single cultural moment. Bender’s comments chime with those of

fellow anthropologist Tim Ingold when he notes that, “environments, since they continually come

into being in the process of our lives—since we shape them as they shape us—are themselves

fundamentally historical”.14 Elsewhere, Ingold develops the concept of “taskscape”, which posits

socially constructed, delineated physical spaces of human activity, yet, as he points out, “by

considering how taskscape relates to landscape, the distinction between them is ultimately

dissolved”.15 Given the underpinning socio-economic dimensions of this analysis, and the natural

intersection between the material exploitation of woodland resources and their cultural meanings,

this too is a relevant concept that will be returned to again later in the analysis.

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 While the disciplinary backgrounds of these scholars naturally lead them to privilege the

embodied experience, this discussion is also concerned with the non-embodied experience: the

imaginative impulse to construct mental landscapes and worlds beyond the practical. For humans,

living in the world is a process of negotiating the duality—sometimes tension—that arises from

existing on multiple levels, as both biological and imaginative beings. Since much of this study is

concerned with textual sources, it finds itself in natural dialogue with ecocritical theories

developed in the field of literary studies, exploring the relationship between written texts and the

non-human natural world while promoting underlying ecological values. Within Old Norse literary

scholarship, ecocritical discourses are emerging through the work of those including Michael

Bintley, who, in his use of Old Norse material, has focused particularly on the significance of trees

in skaldic verse and mythological tracts.16 The ecocritical call to arms was taken up subsequently

by Christopher Abram, whose 2019 monograph has been described as “the first full-length

ecocritical study of Old Norse myth and literature”.17 Abram’s aim is not to understand “the

environmental contexts that have helped shape Old Norse literaary culture”, but rather to read

“contemporary ecological issues into the medieval past so that we can read out of medieval texts

ideas that inform our responses to the world that we live in now”.18 In a work largely concerned

with mythological texts, he notes that such material may have a “deanthropocentrizing tendency

in comparison to other forms of literature”, since, “operating beyond conventional notions of

history and geography, myth may be an important form of eco-discourse precisely because it does

not center on relations between humans and their real-world environment”.19 By contrast, much of

my aim here is to look precisely at relations between humans and their real-world environment,

albeit mediated through a textual tradition that includes not only complex chronological layers but

also oral and literary elements. In this respect it chimes more with Carl Phelpstead’s ecocritical

study of Eyrbyggja saga, which, he argues, concerns itself with ‘the relationship between natural

Page 6 of 31
environment and human civilization—between nature and nation—and specifically with the

transition from a physical environment unaffected by humans to a state of ‘natureculture’ in which

human cultivation and culture both bring about changes in the physical environment and also

endow it with culturally contingent meanings”.20 In the present analysis, I seek to bring similar

ideas into dialogue with still-emerging archaeological evidence, in order to better ground the saga

texts in the socio-cultural realities of the first centuries of Iceland’s settlement.

NORTH ATLANTIC SETTLEMENT

The early settlement of the North Atlantic produced a particularly “complex interaction of

culture and nature”, as explored by McGovern et al.21 The medieval Icelanders were one link in a

Norse diasporic chain that stretched across the ocean, and while many parts of the Scandinavian

“homelands” were thickly wooded, it was a different matter out in the North Atlantic. Indeed, as

Dugmore et al. note, “as the Norse established settlements across the North Atlantic, they crossed

a series of environmental thresholds—such as the limits to forest growth”.22 The settlement and

subsequent history of Iceland is identified by Amorosi et al. as a “well-documented case stud[y]

that can be used to explore the interaction of natural environment and cultural landscape”23 from

a historical ecological perspective, since “[h]umans have seldom been passive receptors of

environmental change”.24 The scope of their investigation means that the “cultural landscape”

refers in the main to subsistence strategies and other practical measures adopted by settlers out in

the North Atlantic. However, the definition of “cultural landscape” can be extended fruitfully to

incorporate a far broader range of beliefs, attitudes and practices, all of which are relevant to a

broader understanding of how human cultures in fact engage with the physical world. Indeed, in

their analysis of how medieval Norse settlers in Greenland adapted to a comparable environment,

Jackson et al. make the point that “colonization could have presented an acute challenge to

Page 7 of 31
knowledge and practices established in homelands as they mismatched with the environments of

new settlements”,25 since “culture plays a critical role in accumulating, transmitting, and, at times,

limiting human adaptive capacities in new environments”. 26 Noting that the cultural transmission

of landscape learning “can be transferred between generations in art, objects, myth and legend,

and ritual performances to give meaning to local environments known as traditional ecological

knowledge”, the study points to “adaptive lags” when “the discrepancy between past and current

environments […] produces a mismatch between behavior and the environment.”27

In the case of the Icelandic settlement, this was a situation with the potential to create a

series of practical and imaginative disconnections in the mental world view of the Norse settlers.

“Practical” in the sense that they came from a cultural context where wood was a primary resource

for fuel (heating, charcoal), construction (ships, dwellings) and everyday life (storage containers,

tools, food, pannage) amongst other essentials. “Imaginative” in the sense that—regardless of

active belief—theirs was a pagan mythological system heavily indebted to trees (Yggdrasil the

world tree, Askr and Embla the first humans) and one that continued to inform key cultural

traditions such as skaldic poetry long after the conversion to Christianity (c. 1000 AD).28 While

such disconnections are perhaps more discernible in the mythological texts, they manifest

themselves differently in the Íslendingasögur, firmly rooted as they are in the non-human natural

world, its topographical features, resources and chronological depth, and it is to these texts that we

now turn.

ÍSLENDINGASÖGUR
One recent estimate suggest that, at landnám, woodland covered more than 25% of the

island of Iceland, and possibly as much as 40%.29 The tree species were limited, predominantly

comprising various types of birch, willow, rowan and juniper.30 The traditional picture is one of

widespread deforestation in the first few decades of settlement, supported by Margrét Hallsdóttir’s

Page 8 of 31
oft-cited study demonstrating rapid declines in birch pollen at this time.31 This chimes with Ari

Þorgilsson’s famous statement in Íslendingabók (the Book of Icelanders, in its extant form written

c. 1122–1133): “Í þann tíð vas Ísland viði vaxit á miðli fjalls ok fjǫru” (at that time, Iceland was

covered with woods between the mountains and the shore).32 Several remarks in the

Íslendingasögur do indeed repeat this sentiment.33 Gísla saga points out that “þá var víða skógum

vaxit” (at that time, woodlands grew widely),34 while Laxdœla saga notes that “Skógr þykkr var í

dalnum í þann tíð” (at that time, there was thick woodland in the valley ).35 Elsewhere, Fljótsdæla

saga notes, “Var þá víða gott til eldibranda, því at öll heruð vóru full af skógum” (then there was

wood widely available for burning, because the whole district was full of woodlands ), while

according to Kjalnesinga saga, “Þá var skógi vaxit allt Kjalarnes […] reisti Andríðr bæ í brautinni

ok kallaði Brautarholt, því at skógrinn var svá þykkr” (at that time, then all Kjalarnes was

overgrown with woodland […] Andríðr built a farm along the path and named it Brautarholt [path

through the woods] because the wood was so thick).36

Some scholars—notably Christopher Abram’s insightful and thought-provoking

monograph—have taken Ari’s statement as a literary construct, painting the illusion of a “golden

age” of settlement, while “in reality, Iceland was covered in a sparse layer of scrub birch and

willow”.37 There may be some truth in this; certainly these are examples of a sharp distinction

being made between the landnám period and the saga-writing era, where the scarcity of present

woodlands is contrasted with their previous abundance. Yet this is certainly not the whole story,

and even in the case of these texts, descriptions of formerly thickly wooded areas do not necessarily

equate to a “lush and capacious Icelandic forest” or “a product of the mind—a trope-ical brain

forest”.38 A useful comparison might be areas of modern-day Greenland that comprised the Eastern

Settlement, a Norse colony from the end of the 10th century up to the 15th century. In the post-

Norse period, this region was neither regularly farmed nor permanently settled, and today hillsides

Page 9 of 31
close to the ruined medieval farmsteads may be covered in low, thick tangles of willow, juniper

and birch trees. These are not “lush and capacious” in the sense that forests and woodlands might

be understood and experienced in a more temperate climate beyond the northern islands of the

North Atlantic, but they are still dense and widely growing, sometimes to the point of being

impassable even on horseback.

As the following analysis seeks to demonstrate, most references to woodlands and wood

resources in the textual corpus cannot be reduced to a literary construct alone. By digging down

deeper into the sources, we can recognize that the sagas also reflect the everyday realities of life

in the first centuries of the Icelandic settlement, up to and including the time when the sagas were

recorded. These texts can tell us much about where wood was available (i.e. woodlands, driftwood,

imports), how these resources were controlled and managed, and their many uses. In this respect,

representations of trees and woodlands actually mirror the more nuanced picture now emerging

from archaeological and scientific research to a remarkable extent.

Over the last two decades, studies have emerged that suggest less geographical and

chronological uniformity than was previously assumed, in terms of how land was altered and

resources utilized in Iceland throughout the middle ages and into the early modern period. Smaller-

scale investigations at specific archaeological sites have painted a more complex, regionally

specific picture. In particular areas there is evidence for rapidly unsustainable woodland reduction

of the sort described by Margrét Hallsdóttir,39 but elsewhere studies reveal sustainable woodland

management and ongoing productivity. For example, a recent analysis by Dugmore et al. points to

the fact that, while woodland would have quickly become constrained in the first century or so of

the settlement, by the 18th century, half of the farms in Iceland still had access to woodland

resources.40 Elsewhere, in light of their work at the high-status complex at Hofstaðir in northern

Iceland, Simpson et al. note that evidence for trees continuing to grow in the vicinity, “is in contrast

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to the prevailing view of an Icelandic settlement period characterised by major woodland loss and

land degradation”.41 Meanwhile, excavations by Church et al. in the Eyjafjallahreppur region of

southern Iceland suggest that woodland resources were carefully managed for charcoal production

and controlled by high-status landowners. This in turn points to the possibility that:

the story of woodland use and deforestation is more complex than a simple felling of trees

within the first two centuries after landnám; rather, a picture of slower depletion over 500

years emerges with evidence of possible woodland management, conservation, and

regeneration occurring within this time.42

A similar picture has emerged from an excavation in Þjórsárdalur in southern Iceland, which

suggests significant woodland survival in the early centuries of settlement. This seems to have

been followed by woodland conservation and stabilization in the later medieval period, so that by

the 16th century there were significant resources still under the ownership of the bishop of

Skálholt.43 Likewise, work by Guðrún Sveinbjarnardóttir et al. at Reykholt, also southern Iceland,

indicates that, while there was some decline in woodland in the period following the landnám, a

more marked reduction in tree cover came between 1150 and 1300. Since this is the period in

which the saga tradition coalesced, even if the extent of settlement era deforestation has been

overstated, it is possible that Icelanders may have noted a decline in woodlands over a longer

period. Yet at the same time, as the study notes, a 12th/13th century charter lists more distant

woodlands owned by the Reykholt estate, together with driftage and grazing rights, suggesting that

woodlands certainly existed in the general vicinity.44 Taken together, the overall picture that

emerges from these localized studies is that land settlement and use was not uniform across the

whole island, which is as true of deforestation as it is for the use and management of other land

resources. As McGovern et al. state in their analysis of early human impact at Mývatnssveit in

northern Iceland (involving local but not universal deforestation, with a persisting birch pollen

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record perhaps suggesting woodland management linked to charcoal-making and iron-

production): “settlement patterns at landnám were far more complex than previously realized.”45

Providing an alternative, complementary perspective on such investigations, Dawn

Mooney’s ongoing analyses of wood types recovered during archaeological excavations presents

crucial information about where wood came from and how it was used in medieval Iceland.

Broadly speaking, Mooney divides this wood into three categories—native wood, driftwood and

imported wood—although as she points out the last two in particular can be hard to tell apart. For

instance, her analysis of the wood used for Iceland’s seven Viking Age boat burials demonstrates

that most were a mixture of pine and oak, and therefore non-native. However, there are various

ways in which this wood might have reached Iceland: as driftwood (known to have been used to

mend boats), as imported wood, or as pre-made vessels from areas where such wood species were

available.46 Likewise, Mooney’s study of 353 Viking Age wooden artefacts found at the

Alþingisreiturinn archaeological site in Reykjavík—an area of the country where rapid tree loss

does seem to have taken place as Margrét Hallsdóttir suggested—shows that the majority of

containers discovered were made of oak (i.e. non-native and possibly imported post-construction).

On the other hand, conifer, which was the primary construction material and made up 50% of the

overall assemblage, would have likely come from driftwood sources. At the same time, she argues,

the presence of some birch wood in the artefact composition also “suggests some native wood

remained, exploited for purposes other than firewood and charcoal”.47 It should be noted that the

patterns of wood use and origin as set out by Mooney are supported by Lísabet Guðmundsdóttir’s

analysis of the wood composition of the Hrísbrú longhouse (9th–11th century) at Mosfell in

southern Iceland. Once again, a mixture of local wood, driftwood, and imported wood seem to

have been involved at various phases of construction and maintenance, leading Lísabet to conclude

that “indigenous wood [was] more important to the Viking Age society than previously thought”.48

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 The picture that has started to emerge from archaeological investigations—the presence or

absence of woodland, wood use and origins—is one that is closely reflected in the Íslendingasögur.

A similar view has been put forward in a recent MA thesis exploring the roles of wood and

woodland in Grettis saga and Eyrbyggja saga, which, the author Rebecca Conway argues,

“illustrate continuing, albeit controlled, political and personal relationships with an important raw

material”.49 Across the saga corpus are found references to native woodland resources, driftwood

and imported wood (predominantly from Norway). When they appear, they usually serve a

narrative function within the plot, which fits with the tone of the genre as a whole. Trees and

woodlands do not provide background color in the sagas, for, just as Jorge Luis Borges’ responded

to fellow Argentinians who complained that his books lacked a sense of locality: “What is truly

native can and often does dispense with local color”.50 Yet when they do feature, they do so

primarily in a way that chimes with the emerging archaeological picture, reflecting the physicality

of the world in which the stories were set, transmitted and recorded.

NATIVE WOODLANDS
In what follows, I aim to give a sense of how Mooney’s three categories of wood are reflected in

the sagas, starting with the presence, use and management of native woodlands. In his excellent

ecocritical analysis of Eyrbyggja saga, Carl Phelpstead draws attention to a feud between Snorri

goði and his neighbors, centering on disputed ownership of a woodland. As Phelpstead points out,

the disgruntled neighbor claims that Snorri is overexploiting the resource: “Snorri goði lét nú vinna

Krákunesskóg ok mikit at gera um skógarhǫggit. Þórólfi bægifót þótti spillask skógrinn; reið

Þórólfr þá út til Helgafells ok beiddi Snorra at fá sér aptr skóginn ok kvezk hafa lét honum, en eigi

gefit” (Now Snorri goði began to make use of Krákunes woods, and many trees were chopped

down. Þórólfr Lame-Foot thought the wood was being destroyed; then he rode out to Helgafell

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and asked Snorri to give him back the wood, and said he had only lent them to him, not given

them).51 In this case, the flash-point is a realistic response to the use, management and ownership

a contested, limited resource. Nor is this the only saga featuring references to ownership and use

of woodland resources, for in the lesser-known ̨Olkofra saga, drama unfolds over an accident in

the woods. Prior to the incident, the protagonist is engaged in charcoal-making, the woodlands a

narrativized taskscape in which he sets about his work. Towards the end of the passage we learn

that these woods are owned remotely by high-status individuals, the legal repercussions of the

accident testament to the fact that, as Ingold writes, “the temporality of the taskscape is social …

because people, in the performance of their tasks, also attend to each other”:52

Þat varð til tíðenda eitt haust, at Ǫlkofri fór í skóg þann, er hann átti, ok ætlaði at brenna

kol, sem hann gerði. Skógr sá var upp frá Hrafnabjǫrgum ok austr frá Lǫnguhlíð. Hann

dvalðisk þar nǫkkura daga ok gerði til kola ok brenndi síðan viðinn ok vakði um nóttina

yfir grǫfunum. En er á leið nóttina, þá sofnaði hann, en eldr kom upp í grǫfunum ok hljóp

í limit hjá, ok logaði þat brátt. Því næst hljóp eldr í skóginn. Tók hann þá at brenna. Þá

gerisk á vindr hvass. Nú vaknaði Ǫlkofri ok varð því feginn, at hann gæti sér forðat. Eldrinn

hljóp í skóginn. Brann sá skógr fyrst allr, er Ǫlkofri átti, en síðan hljóp eldr í þá skóga, er

þar váru næstir, ok brunnu skógar víða um hraunit. Er þar nú kallat á Sviðningi. Þar brann

skógr sá, er kallaðr var Goðaskógr. Hann áttu sex goðar. Einn var Snorri goði […] Þeir

hǫfðu keypt skóga þá til þess at hafa til nytja sér á þingi.53

(It happened one autumn that Ǫlkofri [Ale-Hood] went to the woods that he owned,

intending to make charcoal as he tended to do. The woods were up beyond Hrafnabjǫrg

and east of Lǫnguhlíð. He stayed there for some days to prepare the charcoal-making, and

then burned the wood and watched over the pits at night. But in the night, as he was

sleeping, fire came up from the pits and leapt into the nearby branches, which soon started

Page 14 of 31
 to burn. Next, the fire spread to the woods, which also began to burn. Then a sharp wind

blew up. At this point Ǫlkofri woke up and was lucky to be able to save himself. The fire

spread through the woods. First it burnt all the woods that Ǫlkofri owned, then it leapt into

the woods that were closest, burning the woods all around the lava field. These are now

called Sviðningr [burnt woodlands]. The wood called Goðaskógr [goði woods] was burnt.

It was owned by six goðar, one of whom was Snorri goði […] They had bought the wood

so that they could have use of it at the Þing [assembly].)

Elsewhere in other saga narratives, we meet for example workmen coming down from the local

woods with brushwood and fagots (Fostbrœðra saga, chapter 2) and others being sent into the

woods to cut firewood (Eyrbyggja saga, chapter 35; Gísla saga, chapter 31). Throughout, there is

the sense of a limited but important resource that has to be exploited and managed, often in the

ownership of higher-status individuals. Such a picture reflects many of the archaeological analyses

mentioned above, such as evidence for charcoal production and woodland control by those higher

up the social pecking order.54

DRIFTWOOD
Given its limited role in plot narratives, driftwood features more frequently than might be expected

in the sagas. This backs up the importance given to driftage rights in the Grágás lawcodes,

underlining its significance in a society relatively lacking in a resource so plentiful back in

Scandinavia and the British Isles.55 For good reason, Grettis saga devotes the most narrative space

to driftwood, since Grettir meets his end thanks to a tree that washes up on the shore. Once they

have reached the island of Drangey, the reader is informed that firewood is scarce and driftwood

collection a vital activity, the shore an essential taskscape in a marginal environment barely

suitable for human habitation: “en til eldiviðar var þar hneppst at afla, ok lét Grettir jafnan þrælinn

kanna reka, ok rak þar opt kefli, ok bar hann þau heim til elda” (firewood was hard to come by,

Page 15 of 31
and Grettir often made the thrall look for driftwood; pieces of wood often washed ashore there,

which he carried back to burn).56 The comment foreshadows the appearance of the cursed tree:

Annan dag eptir en kerling hafði tréit magnat, gengu þeir Grettir ofan fyrir bjargit ok leituðu

at eldiviði; en er þeir kómu vestr um eyna, fundu þeir rótartré rekit upp. […] Grettir spyrndi

við fœti sínum ok mælti: “Illt tré ok af illum sent, ok skulu vit annan eldivið hafa.”57

(The day after the old woman had bewitched the tree, Grettir and the others went down the

cliff to search for firewood; when they reached the west part of the island they found the

tree with its roots washed ashore. […] Grettir kicked it with his foot and said: “An evil tree

sent by evil: we should find some other firewood.”)

Elsewhere in the texts, driftwood acquisition and utilization feature in various capacities. These

include driftage rights, such as in Egils saga (“It þriðja bú átti hann við sjóinn á vestanverðum

Mýrum; var þar enn betr komit at sitja fyrir rekum”, he owned a third farm by the sea on the

western side of Mýrar; this was still better for collecting driftage)58 and Grettis saga (“um rekann

var ekki skilit, því at þeir váru svá nógir þá, at hverr hafði þat, er vildi”, nothing was decided about

driftage rights, because there was so much there that everyone could have whatever they liked).59

Likewise, Þorsteins saga hvíta makes reference to driftwood collection in the context of a

poisonous feud (“ek lét fara eptir viðum hross mín […] gengu þau af rekastrǫndum”, I sent my

horses to collect wood […] they came from the driftage beach ),60 while Laxdœla saga mentions

its use for house construction (“Þat var á einu hausti, at í því sama holti lét Óláfr bœ reisa ok af

þeim viðum, er þar váru hǫggnir í skóginum, en sumt hafði hann af rekastrǫndum’, it was one

autumn that Óláfr had a farm built in the same clearing, made of wood that was cut down in the

woods, and some he got from the driftage beaches).61 In a similar vein, Egils saga juxtaposes the

importance of driftwood with Skallagrímr’s skill in shipbuilding: “Skalla-Grímr var skipasmiðr

Page 16 of 31
mikill, en rekavið skorti eigi vestr fyrir Mýrar”, Skallagrímr was a great ship builder, and there

was no shortage of driftwood west of Mýrar).62

Within this context, is also worth drawing attention to the repeated motif of new settlers

throwing high-seat pillars overboard as they approached Iceland and claiming land where the

pillars drifted ashore. Margaret Clunies Ross has discussed this as a literary motif which may be

“meant to convey something of a sense that this was an almost paradisal land when it was first

discovered by Scandinavians, fertile, wooded, inhabited by holy men, and above all, already

Christian”.63 While there may well be an element of this, it is also possible that the practice—

whether historical or literary in origin—had a practical function beyond symbolic land transfer. It

would have made perfect sense to have settled near good driftwood beaches where the currents

were likely to bring wood to whoever controlled the area, and if a piece of wood is thrown

overboard, it is likely to follow the same currents. This is perhaps hinted at in Vatnsdæla saga,

when the new settlers come to a headland: “fundu þeir þar borð stórt nýrekit. Þá mælti Ingimundr:

‘Þat mun ætlat, at vér skylim hér ørnefni gefa, ok mun þat haldask, ok kǫllum eyrina Borðeyri’”

(they found a large wooden plank there, newly washed ashore. Then Ingimundr said: “It must be

intended that we give this place a name that will last, and so let us call the headland Borðeyri

[plank headland]”).64

NORWEGIAN WOOD
The third category of wood to consider is that which has been imported, either because Icelanders

have gone abroad to fetch it, or because it has been bought from visiting merchants. In both cases,

as is so often true of the sagas, Norway is the main player. Moreover, as might be expected,

imported wood is a high-status item for high-status use, with both the trade mechanisms and quality

of lumber being of a different magnitude to that of native woodlands and driftwood. When Egill

Skallagrímsson’s son Bǫðvarr is drowned at sea, he has been buying timber from the merchant

Page 17 of 31
ship moored on Hvítá, a large-scale enterprise that requires manpower and large vessels: “hafði

Egill þar keypt við margan ok lét flytja heim á skipi; fóru húskarlar ok hǫfðu skip áttært, er Egill

átti” (Egill had bought a great deal of timber and arranged for it to be brought home by ship; his

house men went to fetch it on an eight-oared vessel that Egill owned).65 Elsewhere, Norwegian

merchant ships arrive in Iceland’s fjords with timber to sell, such as in Gísla saga: “Þorgrímr reið

til skips ok keypti fjǫgur hundruð viðar […] Ok kemr [Þóroddr] til ok tekr viðinn ok berr saman,

ok þykkir þó nǫkkut annan veg um kaup þeira en Þorgrímr hafði frá sagt” (Þorgrímr rode to the

ship and bought four hundreds of timber […] Þóroddr went out to look at the timber, and it seemed

to him that it was rather less of a bargain than Þorgrímr had reported).66 The same pattern is also

seen in Þórðar saga hreðu, where the need for imported wood is explicitly linked to house-

building: “Þórðr er at skálasmíðinni um sumarit. Ok er mjök var algerr skálinn, kom skip af hafi

at Gásum í Eyjafirði. Þórðr segir bónda, at hann vill ríða til skips ok kaupa þá viðu, er honum þótti

mest þurfa” (Þórðr built the longhouse all through the summer. And when the longhouse was

nearly completed, a ship came from the sea at Gásir in Eyjafjǫrðr. Þórðr told the farmer that wanted

to ride to the ship and buy the wood that he had most need of).67

A similar motif appears in Reykdæla saga ok Víga-Skútu, where once again the transaction

in sizeable, and the wood required for high-status building construction: “Þat er nú at segja, at skip

kom í Eyjafjǫrð eitthvert sinn við Knarrareyri, sem opt kann við at bera, þó at helzt sé hér nǫkkut

frá sagt at sinni. Þat skip var viði hlaðit at miklum hluta. […] Herjólfr átti skála á velli ok vildi

kaupa til góðan við” (Now it is told that a certain ship came into Eyjafjǫrðr at Knarraeyri, which

often happens, although on this occasion there was something to be said about it. The ship was

loaded with wood for the most part. […] Herjólfr was building a longhouse, for which he wanted

to buy good timber).68 It is worth noting that, in the case of Reykdæla saga, the presence of a

merchant ship stocked with timber is explicitly said to be nothing out of the ordinary (sem opt kann

Page 18 of 31
við at bera), and only becomes newsworthy because of the feud that ensues. At the same time,

given the fact that such saga episodes only appear when they are of direct relevance to the narrative

(i.e. leading to a death or feud), they are unlikely to tell us anything historically quantifiable about

the frequency with which such timber-bearing ships actually came to medieval Iceland, either in

the first centuries of settlement or at the time when the sagas were recorded.

Alternatively, saga protagonists may fetch wood from Norway themselves, typically

expensive, high-status ventures for expensive, high-status projects. In both Víga-Glúms saga and

Vatnsdæla saga, the goal is to buy high-quality wood to build houses. In the former, the wayward

protagonist is advised “farir útan ok sœkir þér húsavið” (go abroad and get yourself house-building

timber),69 while the latter states, “Þá er Ingimundr hafði búit nǫkkura hríð at Hofi, lýsir hann

útanferð sinni at sœkja sér húsavið, því at hann kvazk vel vilja sitja bœ sinn” (when Ingimundr

had lived for some time at Hof, he said that he was going abroad to get house-building timber,

because he wanted to live in fine style in his farm ).70 Imported wood functions as significant

narrative device in the sagas specifically because it can be used as a marker of wealth and high

esteem. Therefore, it is perhaps unsurprising that, on multiple occasions, the Norwegian ruler

himself provides the wood (thereby proving that the plucky, talented Icelander is recognized as the

equal of any Norwegian royal). When Ingimundr arrives in Norway to acquire building timber, the

king’s patronage has far-reaching consequences for the Icelander’s future prospects:

Konungr mælti: “Þat er vel gǫrt, er þér ok heimil vár mǫrk sem þú vill hǫggva láta, en ek

mun láta til skips fœra” […] er váraði, var búit skip Ingimundar með farmi þeim, er hann

kaus, ok því viðarvali, er bezt fekk. […] Ingimundr átti ágætt bú með nógum efnum; hann

bœtti nú mikit bœ sinn, því at efnin váru n’óg; hann fekk sér ok goðorð ok manna forráð.71

(The king said: “That is well done, and we give you permission to cut down whatever part

of our forests that you want, and I will have the timber transported to the ship” […] when

Page 19 of 31
 spring arrived, Ingimundr’s ship was loaded with the cargo that he had chosen, and the best

timber that could be had. […] Ingimundr had an excellent farm with many resources; he

now greatly improved his farm because he had enough materials; he acquired a goðorð for

himself and authority over men.)

Likewise, in Heiðarvíga saga, when the protagonist’s farmhouse starts falling down, it is Jarl

Hákon who whose patronage he seeks when “fór hann útan til Nóregs at sœkja sér við til

húsabótar” (he travelled out to Norway to get wood in order to make housing improvements).72

Elsewhere, its cast-list jostling with a host of glitteringly brilliant, royally favored protagonists, it

is unsurprising that Laxdæla saga has so many timber-generous rulers. Hǫskuldr is the first to bask

in the bounty, as he responds to the king’s invitation to stay with him in Norway:

“Hafið þǫkk fyrir boð yðvart, en nú á ek þetta sumar mart at starfa; hefir þat mjǫk til haldit,

er ek hefi svá lengi dvalit at sœkja yðvarn fund, at ek ætlaða at afla mér húsaviðar.” […]

konungr fekk honum húsavið ok lét ferma skipit.73

(“Thanks for your offer, but now I have much to do this summer: this is the main cause of

my delay in seeking you out and paying my respects, for I intend to acquire house-building

timber.” […] The king gave him house-building timber and commanded it to be taken to

the ship.)

A generation later, it is Óláfr Hǫskuldsson who seeks prime building timber from Jarl Hákon, who

“á bezta mǫrk” (owns the best forests).74 The Jarl’s response is suitably generous: “Ósparat skal

þat, þóttu fermir skip þitt af þeim viði” (It would be an honour to fill your ship with the wood).75

Finally, towards the end of the saga Þorkell makes his ill-fated voyage to obtain timber to build a

church equal to that of King Óláfr: “Um várit var viðr sá til skips fluttr, er konungr gaf Þorkatli;

var sá viðr bæði mikill ok góðr” (in the spring the timber that the king had given Þorkell was

loaded onto the ship; there was a lot of it and it was of high quality).76

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 The analysis ends with a saga episode in which all three types of wood resources come

together in one narrative. Króka-Refs saga, with its eponymous master-builder protagonist,

describes how Refr builds an ocean-going ship using driftwood (from a shipwreck) and local wood

(for charcoal), all the while inspired by the large ships built by the timber-rich Norwegians. The

passage conveys a sense of the various wood resources and practical concerns that are brought into

play:

Gestr lætr nú búa hróf eitt mikit ok draga þangat viðu mikla. Knörr einn hafði brotit á

fjörum Gests; hafði hann keypt upp skipviðuna. Þessa alla viðu lætr Gestr færa til hrófs

Refs ok svá sauminn allan. Gestr átti ok járn ósmíðat, ok lézt Refr þat vildu til sín taka,

kveðst sjálfr vildu saum slá. Smíðartól á alla vega lét Gestr þangat bera, svá afl ok kol. […]

Ferr hann heim ok segir Gesti, at eigi mun opt sénn slíkr selabátr, — “því at komit munu

hafa út hingat til Íslands ekki stærri skip.” […] Spyrst þetta nú víða, at Refr Steinsson hafði

gert byrðing haffærandi; þóttu þat vera hér fáheyrð tíðindi, því at hann var kallaðr af

mörgum mannvitull. Sá atburðr hafði orðit, at með föður hans hafði verit á vist norrænn

maðr ok son hans. Váru þeir jafngamlir, Austmanns son ok Refr. Austmanns son hafði sér

at leiku skip þat, er verit hafði í Nóregi sem líkast haffæröndum byrðingum; en áðr

Austmanns son færi á brutt, gaf hann Ref skip þetta, ok þat hafði Refr haft til skemmtanar

sér í eldaskálanum at smíða þar eptir.77

(Now Gestr had a large boatshed built, and lots of wood brought up to it. A knörr had been

wrecked on Gestr’s beach; he brought up all the ship’s wood. Gestr had all the timber

brought to Refr’s shed, together with all the ship nails. Gestr also had a quantity of unforged

iron, and Refr said that he would like that brought too, declaring that he wanted to forge

ship nails himself. Gestr had all manner of smithy tools brought there, likewise a forge and

charcoal. [… Refr] went home and said to Gestr that such a sailing-boat would rarely have

Page 21 of 31
 been seen—“because a bigger ship than this has never come out to Iceland.” […] Now the

news travelled widely that Refr Steinsson had built an ocean-going cargo vessel; it seemed

to be remarkable news because many people thought he was a fool. It happened that a

Norwegian man and his son had once stayed with his father. Refr and the Norwegian’s son

were the same age. The Norwegian’s son had a toy ship to play with, just like a Norwegian

ocean-going cargo vessel. When the Norwegian’s son left, he gave the ship to Refr, which

Refr kept for entertainment in the sitting room, and as a model for his woodwork

afterwards.)

In this passage, many of the themes that have been explored above are united. In order to build a

Norwegian-style ocean-going vessel, itself an fáheyrð (rare, seldom heard) feat, all possible

resources must be deployed. These include enough wood to build a large boat-shed, driftwood

timber and ship’s nails from a wrecked knörr, great quantities of charcoal for the unforged iron,

and a toy ship on which to model the life-sized one, gifted by a Norwegian child who comes from

a heavily wooded country. The saga is highly unlikely to be historical in and of itself (Kendra

Wilson refers to its ‘novelistic self-consciousness’,78 while Frederic Amory describes it as a

skröksaga, meaning false or invented).79 Yet the underlying assumptions that support this

narrative—the scarcity of wood, its need to be sourced from multiple locations, comparisons with

Norway’s superior shipbuilding and woodworking traditions—also support the broader picture

that emerges from the Íslendingasaga corpus and archaeological studies. From the landnám

onwards, the Icelanders were required to engage with the often-challenging, marginal environment

in which they lived, attempting to balance the challenges of land modification with the necessities

and demands of life lived as part of the Norse cultural diaspora. What Króka-Refs saga and other

narratives demonstrate is that—albeit indirectly at times—this is as evident in the saga corpus as

it is in other textual sources and the material record.

Page 22 of 31
 CONCLUSION
In seeking to understand the multifaceted way in which medieval Icelanders—and, by extension,

human cultures more generally—thought about and engaged with the physical environment, it is

necessary to consider the various practical and imaginative nuances that might be layered onto a

topographical space at any given time. Taken as a whole, the Old Norse-Icelandic textual corpus

reflects many of these layers, from pre-Christian cosmological ideas about the world that

continued to hold cultural currency after the conversion, to the lived experience of inhabiting an

island where tree growth was limited and wood resources often at a premium. In the case of the

latter, saga references to woodlands, driftwood and imported timber may serve a literary function

within the narratives, but this does not mean they are literary constructs without connection to a

lived reality. Indeed, as new archaeological and/or scientific data continues to build a more

nuanced, complex, regionally localized picture of land use and modification in medieval Iceland,

it is clear that the sagas do in fact reflect this image to a significant degree. As the first

generations of Icelanders modified the fragile physical environment of their island homeland,

they would have had to adapt to new landscapes and a new physical reality. As part of a wider

cultural diaspora reliant on trees for essentials such as building materials (ships and houses), fuel

(for domestic use and charcoal production) and everyday life (tools, food, pannage, storage

containers) their need for wood was of practical concern. In some Old Norse-Icelandic texts

(most notably Íslendingabók), there does indeed seem to be an awareness of a distinction

between a past with more trees and a present where some degree of deforestation has taken

place. Nevertheless, a more significant, consistent feature of the saga texts is the way in which

they reflect a more complex, quantifiably accurate picture of Iceland’s physical environment

during the middle ages. Icelandic woodlands—and therefore native tree resources needed for

Page 23 of 31
activities such as charcoal-production and fuel—could indeed be scarce and in need of careful

management, often controlled by those in positions of status and power. Driftwood was an

important additional resource for fuel and small-scale construction, once again often controlled

and managed by those who owned the land. Costlier, higher-status projects (such as the

construction of ships and houses) required costlier, higher-status timber supplies from abroad,

and this is the context in which they find their way into the saga narratives.

When considered together, it is the intersection between trees of the imagination and trees

experienced on a day-to-day basis that can help us to understand how the human mind—and human

cultures collectively—can hold multiple layers of meaning and interpretation in the perception of

the physical world. Variously informed by direct experience and imagination, past memories and

present realities, these different layers of understanding and imagining all come together to create

a complex, imperfect, multifaceted impression of the non-human natural world, as it was perceived

and experienced by the medieval Icelanders.

1
Guðrún Sveinbjarnardóttir, Ian A. Simpson, Amanda M. Thomson, “Land in Landscapes Circum

Landnám: An Integrated Study of Settlements in Reykholtsdalur, Iceland,” Journal of the North

Atlantic 1 (2008), 1-15, 1.

2
Richard Cleasby and Guðbrandr Vigfússon, An Icelandic-English Dictionary (Oxford:

Clarendon Press, 1874), s.v. skógr, “a shaw, wood, mörk being a forest”, p. 555.
3
Orel, Germanic Etymology, s.v. wiðuz, p. 462. Cleasby and Vigfússon, Dictionary, s.v. viðr: “a

tree… a wood… felled trees… wood… timber”, p. 703.

4
Mǫrk stems from the Proto-Germanic *markō, and is cognate with OE mearc (“limit, term,

boundary, sign”), Goth marka (“region, border”), OFris merke (“boundary”), OS marka

Page 24 of 31
(“boundary, district”) and OHG marca (“boundary”). See Vladimir Orel, A Handbook of

Germanic Etymology, s.v. *markō (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2003), p. 262.

5
Cleasby and Vigfússon, Dictionary, s.v. mörk, p. 444.
6
Cleasby and Vigfússon, Dictionary, s.v. mörk, p. 444.
7
See Dolly Jørgensen, “The Roots of the English Royal Forest”, Anglo-Norman Studies 32

(2010), 114–28, at 118.

8
Oliver Rackham, The History of the Countryside: The Classic History of Britain’s Landscape,

Flora and Fauna (London: Phoenix), p. 130. For a lengthier discussion see “Wooded Forests:

The King’s Wood-Pasture”, in his Trees and Woodland in the British Landscape: The Complete

History of Britain’s Trees, Woods and Hedgerows (London: Phoenix, rev. ed. 1990), pp. 164–83.
9
For a recent discussion of the debates surrounding this question and the historiographical

positions adopted see Ralph O’Connor, “History and Fiction”, in Ármann and Sverrir Jakobsson,

ed., The Routledge Research Companion to the Medieval Icelandic Sagas (Abingdon: Routledge,

2017), pp. 88–110.

10
See Yi-Fu Tuan, Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience (Minneapolis: University of

Minnesota Press, 1977); Yi-Fu Tuan, “Language and the Making of Place: A Narrative Descriptive

Approach,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 81 (1991), 684–96; Tim Ingold,

“The Temporality of Landscape,” World Archaeology 25 (1993), 152–74; Tim Ingold, The

Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill (Abingdon: Routledge,

2000); Monica Janowski and Tim Ingold, ed., Imagining Landscapes: Past, Present and Future

(Farnham: Ashgate, 2012); Christopher Y. Tilley, A Phenomenology of Landscape: Places, Paths

and Monuments (Oxford: Berg PL, 1994); Christopher Y. Tilley, Interpreting Landscapes:

Geologies, Topographies, Identities (Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, 2010); Barbara Bender,

Contested Landscapes: Movement, Exile and Place (London: Bloomsbury, 2001); Barbara
Page 25 of 31
Bender, “Time and Landscape,” Current Anthropology 43 (2002), 103–12, and AUTHOR 2012b,

at 80–2.
11
Bender, “Time and Landscape,”, p. 103.
12
This is a topic I explore elsewhere in the context of land-naming traditions in the Old Norse

textual record. See Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough, “Naming the Landscape in the landnám

Narratives of the Íslendingasögur,’ Saga-Book of the Viking Society 36 (2012), 79–101.

13
Bender, “Time and Landscape,”, p. 107.
14
Ingold, Perception of the Environment, p. 20.
15
Ingold, “Temporality of Landscape,”, p. 174.
16
Michael D. J. Bintley, “Life-Cycles of Men and Trees in Sonatorrek,” Opticon 1826 (2009), 6;

Michael D. J. Bintley, “Revisiting the Semnonenhain: A Norse Anthropogenic Myth and the

Germania of Tacitus”, Pomegranate 13 (2011), 146–62; Michael D. J. Bintley, “The Human

Forest: People and Trees in Early Medieval England and Scandinavia”, in his Trees in the Religions

of Early Medieval England (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2015), 129–52.

17
Christopher Abram, Evergreen Ash: Ecology and Catastrophe in Old Norse Myth and Literature

(Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2019). Description taken from the publisher’s

summary.
18
Abram, Evergreen Ash, pp. 38–9.
19
Abram, Evergreen Ash, p. 29.
20
Carl Phelpstead, “Ecocriticism and Eyrbyggja saga,” Leeds Studies in English 45 (2014), 1–

18, at 4.
21
Thomas H. McGovern, Adolf Friðriksson, et al., “Landscapes of Settlement in Northern Iceland:

Historical Ecology of Human Impact and Climate Fluctuation on the Millennial Scale,” American

Anthropologist 109 (2007), 27–51, at 27.

Page 26 of 31
22
Andrew J. Dugmore, Thomas H. McGovern, et al., “‘Clumsy Solutions’ and ‘Elegant Failures’:

Lessons on Climate Change Adaptation from the Settlement of the North Atlantic,” in A Changing

Environment for Human Security: Transformative Approaches to Research, Policy and Action, ed.

Linda Synga and Karen O’Brien (Abingdon: Routledge, 2013), pp. 435–51, at 439.
23
Thomas Amorosi, Paul Buckland, et al., “Raiding the Landscape: Human Impact in the

Scandinavian North Atlantic,” Human Ecology 25 (1997), 491–518, at 491.

24
Amorosi, “Raiding the Landscape”, p. 492.
25
Rowan Jackson, Jette Arneborg, et al., “Disequilibrium, Adaptation, and the Norse Settlement

of Greenland,” Human Ecology 46 (2018), 665–84, at 666.

26
Jackson, “Disequilibrium, Adaptation”, p. 671.
27
Jackson, “Disequilibrium, Adaptation”, p. 666.
28
For more see Michael D. J. Bintley, “Life-Cycles of Men and Trees in Sonatorrek,” Opticon

1826 (2009), 6; Michael D. J. Bintley, “Revisiting the Semnonenhain: A Norse Anthropogenic

Myth and the Germania of Tacitus”, Pomegranate 13 (2011), 146–62; Michael D. J. Bintley,

“The Human Forest: People and Trees in Early Medieval England and Scandinavia”, in his Trees

in the Religions of Early Medieval England (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2015), 129–52;

Christopher Abram, Evergreen Ash: Ecology and Catastrophe in Old Norse Myth and Literature

(Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2019).

29
Andrew J. Dugmore, Thomas H. McGovern, et al., “Landscape Legacies of Landnám in

Iceland: What Has Happened to the Environment as a Result of Settlement, Why Did it Happen

and What Have Been Some of the Consequences,” in Human Ecodynamics in the North Atlantic:

A Collaborative Model of Humans and Nature Through Space and Time, ed. Ramona Harrison

and Ruth A. Maher (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2014), pp. 195–211, at 198.
30
Mooney, “Examining Possible Driftwood Use,” pp. 156–7.
Page 27 of 31
31
Margrét Hallsdóttir, Pollen Analytical Studies of Human Influence on Vegetation in Relation to

the Landnám Tephra Layer in Southwest Iceland (Lund: Lund University, 1987). For further

discussion see Andrew J. Dugmore, Mike J. Church, et al., “The Norse landnám on the North

Atlantic Islands: An Environmental Impact Assessment,” Polar Record 41 (2005), 21–37.

32
Jakob Benediktsson, ed., Íslendingabók, Landnámabók, Íslenzk Fornrit, 1 (Reykjavík: Hið

íslenzka fornritafélag, 1968) p. 5.

33
Jón Jóhannesson, ed., Fljótsdæla saga, in Austfirðinga Sǫgur, Íslenzk Fornrit, 11 (Reykjavík:

Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 1950) p. 241.

34
Björn K. Þórólfsson and Guðni Jónsson, ed., Gísla saga Súrssonar, in Vestfirðinga sǫgur,

Íslenzk Fornrit, 6 (Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 1943), p. 86.

35
Einar Ól. Sveinsson, ed., Laxdœla saga, Íslenzk Fornrit, 5 (Reykavík: Hið íslenzka

fornritafélag, 1934), p. 165.

36
Jóhannes Halldórsson, ed., Kjalnesinga saga, Íslenzk Fornrit, 14 (Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka

fornritafélag, 1959), p. 5.
37
Abram, Evergreen Ash, p. 104.
38
Abram, Evergreen Ash, p. 104.
39
See also Paul C. Buckland, Andrew J. Dugmore, et al., “Holt in Eyjafjallasveit, Iceland: A

Palaeoecological Study of the Impact of Landnám,” Acta Archaeologica 61 (1991), 252–71, where

similar claims for deforestation and erosion in Southern Iceland are put forward.
40
Dugmore, “Landscape Legacies”, p. 31.
41
Ian A. Simpson, Orri Vésteinsson, et al., “Fuel Resource Utilisation in Landscapes of

Settlement,” Journal of Archaeological Science 30 (2003), 1401–20, at 1415.

42
Mike J. Church, Andrew J. Dugmore, et al., “Charcoal Production During the Norse and Early

Medieval Periods in Eyjafjallahreppur, Southern Iceland,” Radiocarbon 49 (2007), 659–72, at 669.

Page 28 of 31
43
Andrew J. Dugmore, Mike J. Church, et al., “Abandoned Farms, Volcanic Impacts and

Woodland Management: revisiting Þjórsárdalur, the ‘Pompeii of Iceland’,” Arctic Anthropology

44 (2007), 1–11.
44
Guðrún Sveinbjarnardóttir, Ian A. Simpson, et al., “Land in Landscapes Circum Landnám: An

Integrated Study of Settlements in Reykholtsdalur, Iceland,” Journal of the North Atlantic 1

(2008), 1–15, at 1.
45
Thomas H. McGovern, Adolf Friðriksson at al., “Landscapes of Settlement in Northern Iceland:

Historical Ecology of Human Impact and Climate Fluctuation on the Millennial Scale,” American

Anthropologist 109 (2007), 27–51, at 45.

46
Dawn E. Mooney, “Examining Possible Driftwood Use in Viking Age Icelandic Boats,”

Norwegian Archaeological Review 49 (2016), 156–76.

47
Dawn E. Mooney, “An Archaeobotanical Perspective on Wooden Artefacts from Medieval

Reykjavík,” in Objects, Environment and Everyday Life in Medieval Europe, ed. Ben Jervis, Lee

G. Broderick and Idoia Grau Sologestoa, (Turnhout: Brepols, 2016), pp. 41–66, at 54–5.
48
Lísabet Guðmundsdóttir, “Wood Identifications on Wood Remains from Various Buildings

from the Archaeological Investigation at Hrísbrú,” 1–37, at 33.

http://www.viking.ucla.edu/mosfell_project/reports/wood_hrisbru.pdf
49
Rebecca Conway, Stumped in the Sagas: Woodland and Wooden Tools in the Íslendingasögur

(unpubl. MA, University of Iceland), abstract.

50
Jorge Luis Borges, “The Argentine Writer and Tradition,” in Selected Non-Fictions, ed. Eliot

Weinberger (New York: Penguin, 1999), 423.

51
Einar Ól. Sveinsson and Matthías Þórðarson, ed., Eyrbyggja saga, Íslenzk Fornrit, 4

(Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 1935), p. 90.

52
Ingold, “Temporality of Landscape”, pp. 159 – 60.
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53
Jón Jóhannesson, ed., Ǫlkofra saga, in Austfirðinga sǫgur, Íslenzk Fornrit, 11 (Reykjavík: Hið

íslenzka fornritafélag, 1950), pp. 84–5.

54
For example, Guðrún Sveinbjarnardóttir, “Land in Landscapes”, Dugmore, “Landscape

Legacies”.
55
See Dawn E. Mooney, “Does the ‘Marine Signature’ of Driftwood Persist in the

Archaeological Record? An Experimental Case Study from Iceland,” Environmental

Archaeology 23 (2018), 217–27.

56
Guðni Jónsson, ed., Grettis saga Ásmundarsonar, Íslenzk Fornrit, 7 (Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka

fornritafélag, 1936), p. 238.

57
Guðni Jónsson, Grettis saga, p. 250.
58
Sigurður Nordal, ed., Egils saga Skalla-Grímssonar, Íslenzk Fornrit, 2 (Reykjavík: Hið

íslenzka fornritafélag, 1933), p. 75.

59
Guðni Jónsson, Grettis saga p. 23.
60
Jón Jóhannesson, ed., Þorsteins saga hvíta, in Austfirðinga Sǫgur, Íslenzk Fornrit, 11

(Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 1950), p. 15.

61
Einar Ól. Sveinsson, Laxdœla saga, p. 67.
62
Sigurður Nordal, Egils saga, p. 75.
63
Margaret Clunies Ross, Prolonged Echoes: Old Norse Myths in Medieval Northern Society,

The Viking Collection, 7 (Odense: University Press of Southern Denmark, 1994), p. 174.
64
Einar Ól. Sveinsson, ed., Vatnsdœla saga, Íslenzk Fornrit, 8 (Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka

fornritafélag, 1939), p. 39.

65
Sigurður Nordal, Egils saga, p. 243.
66
Björn K. Þórólfsson and Guðni Jónsson, Gísla saga, pp. 24–5.

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67
Jóhannes Halldórsson, ed., Þórðar saga hreðu, in Kjalnesinga saga, Íslenzk Fornrit, 14

(Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 1959), p. 205.

68
Björn Sigfússon, ed., Reykdœla saga ok Víga-Skútu, in Ljósvetninga saga, Íslenzk Fornrit, 10

(Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 1940), p. 172.

69
Jónas Kristjánsson, ed., Víga-Glúms saga, in Eyfirðinga sǫgur, Íslenzk Fornrit, 9 (Reykjavík:

Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 1956), p. 62.

70
Einar Ól. Sveinsson, Vatnsdœla saga, p. 43.
71
Einar Ól. Sveinsson, Vatnsdœla saga, pp. 44–5.
72
Sigurður Nordal and Guðni Jónsson, ed., Heiðarvíga saga, in Borgfirðinga sǫgur, Íslenzk

Fornrit, 3 (Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag,1938), p. 216.

73
Einar Ól. Sveinsson, Laxdœla saga, p. 165.
74
Einar Ól. Sveinsson, Laxdœla saga, p. 78.
75
Einar Ól. Sveinsson, Laxdœla saga, p. 78.
76
Einar Ól. Sveinsson, Laxdœla saga, p. 216.
77
Jóhannes Halldórsson, ed., Króka-Refs saga, in Kjalnesinga saga, Íslenzk Fornrit, 14

(Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 1959), pp. 127–9.

78
Kendra J. Willson, “Króka-Refs saga as Science Fiction: Technology, Magic and the

Materialist Hero,” in The Fantastic in Old Norse/Icelandic Literature: Sagas and the British

Isles: Preprint Papers of the 13th International Saga Conference Durham and York, 6th–12th

August, 2006, ed. J. McKinnell, David Ashurst and Donata Kick (Durham: The Centre for

Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Durham University, 2006), pp. 1064–1070, at 1064.
79
Frederic Amory, “Pseudoarchaism and Fiction in Króka-Refs saga,” Medieval Scandinavia 12

(1988), 7–23, at 22.

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