Marine Resource Utilization at Eroding Coastal Sites in Northern Iceland

 Hafnarbúðir (Harbor booths) is a site at the center of large, medieval specialized marine resource exploitation area in Northern Iceland. With NSF funding The Fiske Center, in cooperation with Háskólinn á Hólum (Hólar University), and Byggðasafns Skagfirðinga (The Skagafjörður Heritage Museum) has been studying this site.

The farm, today called Hafnir, has numerous small structures, features, and bone deposits perched precariously on an eroding sea bank. Much of the archaeology of Viking Age Iceland centers on farms and farmsteads, though archaeologists and historians recognize that many key economic activities occurred beyond the farmstead. This area therefore has the potential to shift conventional narratives of Viking Age life to more accurately reflect its social and economic complexity, while advancing understanding of North Atlantic marine and coastal adaptations more generally. 

Working collaboratively with Icelandic researchers and students, the Fikse Center team is helping to determine site boundaries, date deposits and recover material for preliminary analysis. Site documentation includes profiling, mapping, photography, and an intensive coring regime to bound site limits, locate concentrated anthropogenic deposits, and recover tephras in stratigraphic context. Flotation samples are being analyzed for identification, dating, and location of activity areas. Whalebone recovered from the site will be subjected to collagen fingerprinting and ancient DNA analysis to identify represented species. Finally, the research team is helping to conduct a systematic review of historical documents related to the site and nearby farms 

The project is under the direction of Lísabet Guðmundsdóttir (Minjastofnun Íslands [The Cultural Heritage Agency of Iceland]), Guðný Zoëga (Hólar University), Ásta Hermannsdóttir (Skagafjörður Heritage Museum), and John Steinberg (UMass Boston)..