The discovery of the 1,000-year-old farmhouse caps two
years of digging by a UCLA-led team of 15 archeologists in a
hay field outside the seaside town of Saudarkrokur, a
university spokeswoman said.
Last year, the team uncovered the outlines of the
1,600-square-foot structure built of peat moss bricks. They did
so by using geophysical sensing equipment that sends electrical
currents through the ground.
The team returned this summer and excavated the site,
revealing a fortress-like structure with 5-foot -thick turf
walls, floors of compacted earth and charcoal, and interior
walls lined by 6-foot-long raised sleeping benches.
The long, narrow structure was discovered about 150 yards
east of the Glaumbaer Folk Museum, which explores the history
of the farm's earliest recorded occupants, Thorfinnsson and his
parents, Gudrud Thorbjarnardottir and Thorfinn Karlsefni.
"When we realized the size and age of the structure, we got
really excited, but we didn't dare hope it was anything more
than a very old cow barn," said John Steinberg of UCLA's Cotsen
Institute of Archeology. "But now it looks as though we may
really have found this farmhouse that's been the stuff of
legends for nearly a millennium."
According to Viking lore, Thorbjarnardottir and Karlsefni
traveled to North America in 1004, following the path of
legendary Greenland explorer Leif Eriksson.
VINLAND
Their son was born a year later in a place they called
Vinland, which is believed to be in the Canadian province of
Newfoundland.
According to "The Vinland Sagas" written some 20 years
later, the family, described as the first European settlers in
the New World, returned to Iceland after three years and
settled in Glaumbaer.
The family apparently became wealthy selling New World
goods to Europeans.
Researchers believe the farmhouse's relatively large size
-- 95 feet long by about 17 feet wide -- reflects its owners'
substantial wealth.
Carbon dating placed the construction period of the house
-- built in three phases -- between 976 and 1042. A thin
volcanic ash layer from the 1104 volcanic eruption covers the
structure and confirms that it was occupied between 1000 and
1100, the researchers said.
"We can't be certain of the name of the home's owners but
its age and location are certainly consistent with the Saga
description of Snorri's farm," Steinberg said.
Archeologists initially believed that Thorfinnsson's house
was buried beneath the walls of the Glaumbaer museum, which
occupies one of the oldest standing turf houses in Iceland.
The museum turf house stands on a ridge above the newly
discovered farmhouse.
Researchers now believe that the long-lived Snorri
Thorfinnsson died at the farmhouse before the family moved up
to the house on the ridge in about 1100 -- a watershed period
in Viking history.
"Relocating the main farmhouse from low-lying areas to
higher ground around 1100 is consistent with a general
reorganization of settlements as Iceland moved from a
collection of chiefdoms to a more formal state," Steinberg
said.
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