Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
2015
Journal
of North:
the North
Debating the Thing
in the
TheAtlantic
Assembly Project II
N. Mehler
Journal of the
North Atlantic
Special Volume 8
Introduction
ingvellir (Fig. 1) was the site of the Icelandic
main assembly during the Viking period and the
Middle Ages. The place name consists of the components ing, which refers to the function of the
site, and vellir, the Old Norse (ON) term for a level
field (Fellows-Jensen 1996), which describes the flat
grounds at the northern end of Lake ingvallavatn.
At some point at the end of the Age of Settlement
(ca. 874930), the site was chosen as a location for
the annual main assembly, which was held there until 1798. The people attending these meetings assembled in the open each summer for about two weeks.1
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Let us assume that ingvellir was not only the location for the main assembly but also a market place,
as has been suggested by some historians. There are
two possibilities of how we could imagine trade to
have taken place at ingvellir. The first option is that
a demarcated area existed within the so-called ingmark, the boundary that defined and surrounded the
greater assembly area (Karlsson 2007:118), serving
as a market area where local or foreign merchants
dwelled in booths or tents, where people could come
to buy and sell, and where craftsmen offered their
goods and services. In such a scenario, while the
assembly attendees gathered at the court area to
conduct political affairs, members of their retinues
would have had opportunities to buy and exchange
goods. Such a market area would not likely have
been near the court area but rather on its margins.
The alternate possibility is that there was no defined
market area but that trade could have been conducted anywhere, in a dispersed fashion, within the area
where the assembly attendees dwelled. Assembly
attendees could also have been traders themselves,
selling and exchanging goods at their booths and
tents in a door-to-door business. In this scenario,
such traders would have been scattered all over the
assembly area.
The first option might well look similar to Icelandic trading sites such as Gsir, a seasonally occupied trading site and beach market in Northern
Iceland which, according to archaeological and
written evidence, operated from the early 11th century to around 1400. The site is characterized by a
set of booths, the remains of many of which are still
visible today. Excavations conducted between 2001
and 2006 exposed an area of approximately 600 m2
within the market area, revealing the remains of
booths, workshops, and garbage heaps or storage
pits. Large numbers of animal bones were found, as
well as many pieces of pottery, leather, iron artifacts,
baking stones, textiles, and other items (Harrison et
al. 2008: 100-115, Hermannsdttir 1987, Roberts
2006).4 If such a market area had ever existed at
ingvellir, we would surely find archaeological evidence for it.
Finding archaeological evidence for the latter
option would be much more difficult. Certain crafts
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1922). However, only small areas have been excavated (Fig. 2). Two types of possible evidence are
analyzed in more detail in the following discussion
to provide the basis for a discussion on the extent of
trade during the Aling.
Booths
The historical works cited above did not venture
any guesses as to where trade within the assembly
site area was conducted and whether there could
have been a designated trading area within the
boundaries of the assembly site.14 ingvellir is the
location of many booths that served as temporary
Figure 2. Map of ingvellir, with its ruins as surveyed by Fornleifastofnun slands and the findspots of some of the artifacts
discussed (see Table 1). Marked black are the areas of archaeological excavations since 1999, during many of which old
trenches from antiquarians such as Sigurur Vigfsson were re-excavated. Excavations prior to 1999 were even smaller in
extent and are not included in this map. The area with the booths lies west of the river xar. Image Howell Roberts,
Fornleifastofnun slands, and Joris Coolen, Centre of Baltic and Scandinavian Archaeology, Schleswig (Germany).
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Artifacts
The artifacts that have been recovered at ingvellir since the beginning of archaeological research
are the second type of evidence (Fig. 2). As noted
above, the excavated Viking and medieval layers
have only yielded a small number of artifacts. This is
not surprising, as assembly sites were generally used
only for very short periods of time, and the meetings
at ingvellir, in particular, only lasted about two
weeks (e.g., Jhannesson 1974:45). In addition, the
excavations undertaken to date have been small in
scale and in most cases only consisted of relatively small trenches. It is not the aim of this paper to
provide a full overview of all the finds discovered
at ingvellir. The intention is rather to concentrate
on those Viking and medieval artifacts that might
be considered indicative of trade. In the following, I
will present an overview and discussion of all the Viking and medieval artifacts discovered that suggest
such economic activities (Table 1).
Trade can be traced in the archaeological record
in many ways. One way is to find artifacts of materials that are not native to the places where they are
found. In the case of ingvellir, an example would
be the five ceramic sherds discovered during the
excavation that took place just north of the present
church in 1999. Icelanders did not produce pottery
until modern times, and all ceramic vessels dating to
before the mid-20th century were imported (Sveinbjarnardttir 1996). These pottery fragments, very
small body sherds, can only be roughly dated to the
Table 1. Viking-age and medieval artifacts discovered during excavations at ingvellir; see Figure 2 for the findspots of the artifacts.
Artifact type
Date
Coin
9831002
Origin
Reference
Germany,
Goslar
Vsteinsson 1999:1921,
Holt 1998:91, figs. 4 and 5
Coin
10651080
Norway
Coin
11th century
England
rarsson 19211922
Coin
11 century
Norway
Coin
11 century
Norway
Crozier
11th century
1957
Eldjrn 1970
th
th
Viking period
Gsladttir 2005:18
Gsladttir 2005:18
Whetstone fragment
Gsladttir 2005:19
rarsson 1945:114,
Gsladttir 2005:19
Pottery
Mehler 1999
12th/13th century
England
Medieval church
Weight
Medieval
Near present church
Iron nails
Several different structures
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Acknowledgments
I am most grateful to Adolf Fririksson, Orri Vsteinsson, Mjll Snsdttir, Birna Lrusdttir, Alexandra
Sanmark, Frode Iversen, Sarah Semple, and Michele
Hayeur Smith for their assistance and critical comments.
Kevin Smith acted as guest-editor, and his comments
improved the quality of this article considerably. I also
thank Howell M. Roberts and Joris Coolen for the map
of ingvellir. Gurn Alda Gsladttir, Mjll Snsdttir,
and Anton Holt helped me with the finds, and Margrt
Hrnn Hallmundsdttir and Sigrid Cecilie Juel Hansen
provided information on the 2009 excavations and Figure
3. John Ljungkvist shared his thoughts on Gamla Uppsala
with me. Last but not least, I wish to thank the anonymous reviewer(s) for references and help on improving
the paper.
Primary Sources
DI = Diplomatarium Islandicum
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Endnotes
The exact date of these meetings is hard to determine,
as the Icelandic calendar prior to the introduction of the
Christian year in the 12th century had some chronological
discrepancies (Jhannesson 1974:3547).
2
The archaeological work conducted at ingvellir has been
summarized in Fririksson (2002) and in Bell (2010).
3
On the effect of nationalism on Icelandic historiography
see, e.g., Byock (1992).
4
See Vsteinsson 2009 for a different interpretation of
Gsir as a market place.
5
For this study, I have used the Icelandic texts made available at http://www.snerpa.is and http://www.sagadb.org
(last accessed October 2013) and the most recent German
translations provided by Bldl et al. (2011).
6
Eldgrmr says: a er erindi mitt hinga a eg vil kaupa
a r sthrossin au hin dru er Kotkell gaf r fyrra
sumar. ... En etta sumar mun eg fara a sj hrossin hvor
okkar sem hltur au a eiga aan fr.
7
Fengu eir a eina rs teki er hj voru a eir drgu
Skafta inn b sverskria nokkurs flatan.
8
Heusler 1937:162.
9
See also Heusler (1937, Waffengriff in the index on p.
455).
10
For a discussion of craftsmen, see Heusler (1937:119);
for a discussion of cobblers, see Heusler (1937:162).
11
lkofri kom til ings og tti mungt a selja, kom
til fundar vi vini sna sem vanir voru a kaupa l
a honum. The text does not explicitly state that this
takes place at ingvellir, but the context leaves no doubt
about that.
12
En er Ormur var tvtugur a aldri rei hann til Alingis
sem oftar. [...] En um daginn er eir gengu t st hituketill hj heituhsinu s er tk tvr tunnur.
13
For the purposes of this paper, only the sagas of the
Icelanders were studied. Heimskringla has not been
studied in detail.
14
For a discussion on the boundaries of ingvellir, see
Karlsson (2007).
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