Geografie 2025, 130, 251-269
https://doi.org/10.37040/geografie.2025.015
(Im)mobile Vikings? Environmental stress, adaptation, and the decision not to leave Iceland
References
1. 2008): Local-scale adaptations: A modeled assessment of soil, landscape, microclimatic, and management factors in Norse home-field productivities. Geoarchaeology, 23, 500–527.
< , W.P., SIMPSON, I.A., VÉSTEINSSON, O. (https://doi.org/10.1002/gea.20228>
2. ALDRED, O. (2006): Réttir in the Landscape: A Study on the Context of Focal Points. In: Arneborg, J., Grřnnow, B. (eds.): Dynamics of Northern Societies. Proceedings of the SILA/NABO Conference on Arctic and North Atlantic Archaeology, Copenhagen, May 10–14, 2004, National Museum Studies in Archaeology and History, Copenhagen, 355–364.
3. 1987): Ecosystem disturbance in Iceland. Arctic and Alpine Research, 1, 4, 508–513.
< , A. (https://doi.org/10.1080/00040851.1987.12002633>
4. ARNALDS, Ó. (2015): The Soils of Iceland. Springer, Dordrecht.
5. 1996): They did not live by grass alone: the politics and palaeoecology of animal fodder in the North Atlantic region. Environmental Archaeology, 1, 41–54.
< , T., BUCKLAND, P.C., DUGMORE, A., INGIMUNDARSON, J.H., MCGOVERN, T.H. (https://doi.org/10.1179/env.1996.1.1.41>
6. 2015): What really caused the Viking Age? The social content of raiding and exploration. Archaeological Dialogues, 89–106.
< , S. (https://doi.org/10.1017/S1380203815000112>
7. 2008): What caused the Viking Age?. Antiquity, 82, 317, 671–685.
< , J.H. (https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003598X00097301>
8. 2022): Landnám, Land Use and Landscape Change at Kagađarhóll in Northwest Iceland, Environmental Archaeology, 27, 2, 211–227.
< , R., ERLENDSSON, E., EDDUDÓTTIR, D.D., MÖCKEL, S.D., TINGANELLI, L., GÍSLADÓTTIR, G. (https://doi.org/10.1080/14614103.2021.1949680>
9. BENEDIKTOSSON, J. (1986): Íslendingabók. Landnámabók, Hiđ íslenzka fornritafélag. Íslenzk fornrit, 1, Reykjavík.
10. BUCKLAND, P. (2000): The North Atlantic environment. In: Fitzhugh, W., Ward, E. (eds.), Vikings: The North Atlantic Saga. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, 146–153.
11. BYOCK, J. (2023): Feud in the Icelandic Saga. Berkeley: University of California Press.
12. CLUNIES ROSS, M. (2010): The Cambridge Introduction to the Old Norse-Icelandic Saga. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (Cambridge Introductions to Literature).
13. DAMM, C. (2025): Volcanic Vulnerability in Medieval Iceland, In: Collet, D. et al. (eds.), Nordic Climate Histories. Impacts, Pathways, Narratives, 103–122.
14. DUGMORE, A., VÉSTEINSSON, O. (2012): Black Sun, High Flame, and Flood: Volcanic Hazards in Iceland. In: Cooper, J., Sheets, P. (eds.), Surviving Sudden Environmental Change: Answers from Archaeology, University Press of Colorado, Denver, 67–90.
15. 2012): Cultural adaptation, compounding vulnerabilities and conjunctures in Norse Greenland. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109, 10, 3658–3663.
< , A.J., MCGOVERN, T.H., VÉSTEINSSON, O., ARNEBORG, J., STREETER, R., KELLER, C. (https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1115292109>
16. 2009): Conceptual Models of 1,200 years of Icelandic Soil Erosion Reconstructed Using Tephrochronology. Journal of the North Atlantic, 2, 1–18.
< , A. J., GÍSLADÓTTIR, G., SIMPSON, I. A., NEWTON, A. (https://doi.org/10.3721/037.002.0103>
17. 2007): Abandoned farms, volcanic impacts, and woodland management: Revisiting Ţjórsárdalur, the “Pompeii of Iceland”. Arctic Anthropology, 44, 1, 1–11.
< , A.J:, CHURCH, M.J., MAIRS, K.-A., MCGOVERN, T.H., PERDIKARIS, S., VÉSTEINSSON, O. (https://doi.org/10.1353/arc.2011.0021>
18. 2005): The Norse landnám on the North Atlantic islands: an environmental impact assessment. Polar Record, 41, 21–37.
< , A., CHURCH, M., BUCKLAND, P., EDWARDS, K., LAWSON, I., MCGOVERN, T., PANAGIOTAKOPULU, E., SIMPSON, I., SKIDMORE, P., SVEINBJARNARDÓTTIR, G. (https://doi.org/10.1017/S0032247404003985>
19. 2015): Life on the periphery is tough: Vegetation in Northwest Iceland and its responses to early-Holocene warmth and later climate fluctuations. The Holocene, 25, 9, 1437–1453.
< , S.D., ERLENDSSON, E., GÍSLADÓTTIR, G. (https://doi.org/10.1177/0959683615585839>
20. EINARSSON, B. (2003): Egils saga. Viking Society for Northern Research, University College London, London.
21. ERLENDSSON, E., EDWARDS, K.J., VICKERS, K., SVEINBJARNARDÓTTIR, G., GÍSLADÓTTIR, G. (2018): The palaeoecology and cultural landscapes associated with Reykholt. In: Ţorláksson, H., Sveinbjarnardóttir, G. (eds.): Snorri Sturluson and Reykholt: The Author and Magnate, his Life, Works and Environment at Reykholt in Iceland. Museum Tusculanum Press, Copenhagen, 161–203.
22. ERLENDSSON, E. (2012): Pollen Analysis on Samples from Context [577]. In: Sveinbjarnardóttir, G. (ed.): Reykholt: Archaeological Excavations at a High-Status Farm in Western Iceland, Snorrastofa and the National Museum of Iceland, Reykjavík, 247–249.
23. FRIĐRIKSSON, A., VÉSTEINSSON, O. (2003): Creating a Past. A Historiography of the Settlement of Iceland.
<https://doi.org/10.1484/M.SEM-EB.3.3834>
24. GEIRSDÓTTIR, Á, MILLER, G.H., AXFORD, Y., ÓLAFSDÓTTIR, S. (2009): Holocene and latest Pleistocene climate and glacier fluctuations in Iceland. Quaternary Science Reviews, 28, 21−22, 2107–2118.
<https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2009.03.013>
25. HARTMAN, S., OGILVIE, A.E.J., INGIMUNDARSON, J., DUGMORE, A.J., HAMBRECHT, G., MCGOVERN, T. (2017): Medieval Iceland, Greenland, and the New Human Condition: A case study in integrated environmental humanities. Global and Planetary Change, 156.
<https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloplacha.2017.04.007>
26. HILES, W., LAWSON, I.T., ROUCOUX, K.H., STREETER, R.T. (2021): Late survival of woodland contrasts with rapid limnological changes following settlement at Kalmanstjörn, Mývatnssveit, northeast Iceland, Boreas, 50.
27. ICELANDIC MET OFFICE: https://en.vedur.is/.
28. KACZAN, D.J., ORGILL-MEYER, J. (2020): The Impact of Climate Change on Migration: A Synthesis of Recent Empirical Insights, Climatic Change, 158, 281–300,
29. KARLSSON, G. (2000): The History of Iceland. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis.
30. KLEEMANN, K. (2023): A Mist Connection: An Environmental History of the Laki Eruption of 1783 and Its Legacy. De Gruyter, Berlin-Boston.
31. McCreesh, B. (2018): The Weather in the Icelandic Sagas: The Enemy Without. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
32. MCGOVERN, T.H., PERDIKARIS, S., TINSLEY, C. (2001): Economy of Landnam: the Evidence of Zooarchaeology. In: Bragason, U. et al. (ed.), Westward to Vinland. Nordahl Inst., Reykjavík, 154–165.
33. 1988): Northern Islands, human error, and environmental degradation: A view of social and ecological change in the Medieval North Atlantic. Human Ecology, 16, 3, 225–270.
< , T.H., BIGELOW, G., AMOROSI, T., RUSSELL, D. (https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00888447>
34. MCGOVERN, T.H. (1985): The Arctic frontier of Norse Greenland. In Green, S., Perlman, S. (eds.), The Archaeology of Frontiers and Boundaries. Academic Press, New York, 275–323.
35. MCLEMAN, R.A. (2014): Climate and Human Migration: Past Experiences, Future Challenges. New York: Cambridge University Press.
36. 2024): Disparate impacts of the Eldgjá and Laki flood-lava eruptions. The Holocene, 34, 9, 1369–1385.
< , C.A.G., OPPENHEIMER, C., THORDARSON, T., NEWTON, A.J., MORELAND, W. M., DUGMORE, A.J. (https://doi.org/10.1177/09596836241254478>
37. NORDVIG, M. (2021): Volcanoes in Old Norse Mythology: Myth and Environment in Early Iceland, ARC Humanities Press, Leeds.
38. OLAFSSON, E., LUDVIGSSON, P., GUDMUNDSSON, G., HESDORFFER, D., KJARTANSSON, O., HAUSER, W.A. (2025): Incidence of unprovoked seizures and epilepsy in Iceland and assessment of the epilepsy syndrome classification: a prospective study. The Lancet Neurology, 4, 10, 627−634.
<https://doi.org/10.1016/S1474-4422(05)70172-1>
39. PÁLSSON, H., EDWARDS, P. (2007): The Book of Settlements: Landnámabók. University of Manitoba Press, Winnipeg.
40. PFISTER, C. (2018): Evidence from the Archives of Societies: Documentary Evidence – Overview. In White, S., Pfister, C., Mauelshagen, F. (eds): The Palgrave Handbook of Climate History. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
41. 2017): Male-biased operational sex ratios and the Viking phenomenon: an evolutionary anthropological perspective on late Iron Age Scandinavian raiding. Evolution and Human Behavior 38, 3, 315–324.
< , B., PRICE, N. COLLARD, M. (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2016.10.013>
42. SCHMID, M.M.E., DUGMORE, A., NEWTON, A., VÉSTEINSSON, O. (2021): Multidisciplinary Chronological Data from Iceland Indicate a Viking Age Settlement Flood, Rather than a Flow or Trickle. In: Napolitano, M.F., Stone, J.J., DiNapoli, R.J. (eds.): The Archaeology of Island Colonization: Global Approaches to Initial Human Settlement. University Press of Florida, Gainesville, 132–179.
43. 2017): Tephra isochrons and chronologies of colonisation. Quaternary Geochronology, 40, 56–66.
< , M.M.E., DUGMORE, A.J., VÉSTEINSSON, O., NEWTON, A.J. (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quageo.2016.08.002>
44. 2002): Land management for surplus grain production in early Iceland. Human Ecology, 30, 3, 345–368.
< , I.A., IAN, A., ADDERLEY, W.P., GUĐMUNDSSON, G., HALLSDÓTTIR, M., SIGURGEIRSSON, M., SNĆSDÓTTIR, S. (https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1021161006022>
45. 2015): The onset of the palaeoanthropocene in Iceland: Changes in complex natural systems. The Holocene, 25, 10, 1662–1675.
< , R., DUGMORE, A.J., LAWSON, I.T., ERLENDSSON, E., EDWARDS, K.J. (https://doi.org/10.1177/0959683615594468>
46. 2012): Plague and landscape resilience in premodern Iceland. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 109, 10, 3664–3669.
< , R., DUGMORE, A.J., VÉSTEINSSON, O. (https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1113937109>
47. ŢÓRARINSSON, S. (1967): The Eruption of Hekla 1947–1948. Volume I. The Eruptions of Hekla in Historical Times. A Tephrochronological Study. Reykjavík: H.F. Leiftur.
48. 2007): Volcanism in Iceland in historical time: Volcano types, eruption styles and eruptive history. Journal of Geodynamics 43, 1, 118–152.
< , Th., LARSEN, G. (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jog.2006.09.005>
49. THORDARSON, Th., SELF, S. (2003): Atmosphere and environmental effects of the 1783–1784 Laki eruption: A review and reassessment. Journal of Geophysical Research, 108, D1, AAC 7-1-AAC 7-29.
<https://doi.org/10.1029/2001JD002042>
50. TSCHAN, F.J. (1959; 2002): Adam of Bremen, History of the Archbishops of Hamburg- Bremen (Records of Civilisation. Sources and Studies). Columbia University Press, New York.
51. 2014): Expensive errors or rational choices: the pioneer fringe in Late Viking Age Iceland. European Journal of Post-Classical Archaeologies, 4, 39–68.
, O., CHURCH, M., DUGMORE, A., MCGOVERN, T., NEWTON, A. (
52. VÉSTEINSSON, O. (2007): A Divided Society: Peasants and the Aristocracy in Medieval Iceland, Viking and Medieval Scandinavia, 3, 117–139.
53. VÉSTEINSSON, O. (1998): Patterns of Settlement in Iceland. A Study in Pre-History. Saga-Book of the Viking Society, 25, 1–29.
54. 1995): Evidence of the Eldgjá (Iceland) eruption in the GISP2 Greenland ice core: relationship to eruption processes and climatic conditions in the tenth century. The Holocene 5, 129–140.
< G.A., GERMANI M.S., LARSEN G., BAILLIE, G.L.M., WHITLOW, S., TWICKLER, M.S., TAYLOR, K. (https://doi.org/10.1177/095968369500500201>