Fishing Booths and Fishing Strategies in Medieval Iceland: an Archaeofauna from the of Akurvík, North-West Iceland

Gásir in Eyjafjörđur: International Exchange and Local Economy in Medieval Iceland

“…Any fi sh shipped through the market to Europe had to have been produced elsewhere. As Figure 12 indicates, the proportion of identifi ed gadid fi sh species present at Gásir do not resemble the cod-dominated signatures of the nearly contemporary fi shing sites of Gjögur and Akurvík in the West Fjords (Amundsen et al 2005, but rather the haddock-rich inland "consumer" sites of Viking Age Mývatn (Hofstaðir and Sveigakot; McGovern et al 2006). This pattern suggests that the Gásir seasonal settlement was not being cheaply provisioned with dried cod produced in the previous winter from fi shing sites like Akurvík, nor were the Gásir residents simply consuming part of the dried cod which may have been a proportion of the Icelandic bulk goods being exported from Gásir.…”

“…Clusters of small structures superficially similar individually to the Gásir buildings are found in many coastal areas, but these are specialized fishing stations occupied seasonally during the winter fishing, with their location closely tied to access to offshore fishing grounds (Edvardsson et al 2004). The oldest radiocarbon dated fishing station is at Akurvík in Strandasysla in the West Fjords, which has produced basal dates in the mid-13th century and terminal dates in the mid-15th century for a series of stratified occupations of a shell sand beach (Amundsen et al 2005). The Akurvík site has not been fully excavated, but investigations of a long erosion cut profile allowed the documentation of several early "fishing booth" structures dating to both early and late phases.…”

“…The cleithrum travels with the preserved fi sh along with varied amounts of the vertebral column, and tends to disproportionately accumulate at consumer sites (Perdikaris andMcGovern 2007, 2008). The premaxilla is normally discarded at the point of fi sh cleaning and preparation for drying or consumption, and thus tends to accumulate differentially at fi sh-producing sites such as Akurvík (Amundsen et al 2005). Context 2076 pit fi ll displays just such a fi sh-processing pattern: substantial amounts of skull and cranial fragments, including the premaxilla, producing a classic "producer" profi le.…”

“…Bessastaðir lies just south of Reykjavík and was a high-status farm and seat of the Danish Governor during the Late Middle Ages (Amorosi 1996; Amorosi et al 1992;Ólafsson 1991a, b;McGovern 1990). Víðey was a rich monastic site outside modern Reykjavík harbor (Amorosi 1996), Svalbarð is a long occupied local church farm in the north east (Amorosi 1996, Amorosi et al 1992, and as noted, Akurvík is a seasonally occupied fishing station in the West fjords of Iceland with two major phases (Akurvík 24, Akurvík 22) dated to the 13 th and 15 th centuries, respectively (Amundsen et al 2005. The overall Gásir archaeofauna does not fit exactly with the high-status farm archaeofauna profile such as that from Víðey or Svalbarð, despite displaying a broadly similar mix of fish and domestic stock, lacking the substantial amounts of bird and sea-mammal remains found on the monastery or local elite farm.…”

“…The presence of large amounts of marine fi sh bone as well as some seamammal bone and sea-bird bones and eggs on inland sites in several parts of Iceland ) combined with the wealth and importance of Viking Age sites with excellent fi shing access but limited agricultural land in the mountainous North West peninsula (Edvardsson and McGovern 2005) have led archaeologists to model a well-developed Viking Age staple-goods exchange network in Iceland. This well-organized exchange system pre-dates the major expansion of commercial cod fi shing in the eastern North Atlantic ca 950-1100 now documented by both zooarchaeology and written sources (Amundsen et al 2005, Barrett and Richards 2004, Perdikaris 1999). Growing evidence for early intra-island exchange of dried fi sh products prior to the 12 th -century commercial fi shing expansion thus raises questions about the undocumented role of inter-island fi sh trading and its role in the initial settlement process.…”