The
problem that I have with dating this sort of stuff is that it has become clear
that the potential to actually colonize these islands and many others began as
early as 5000BP. That then begs the more
important question of why not? The quick
answer is that such colonization was seriously unattractive and only happened
from dire necessity.
That
it was the Vikings who settled in mass conforms to that conjecture as they were
pre adapted to conditions less attractive to any others. Perhaps the Faroes had to wait for the
Vikings.
In
any case, sea going fisher folk likely from the locally mobile Irish tribes
also operated here as well.
New
evidence of pre-Viking settlement in Faroe Islands
THURSDAY,
AUGUST 22, 2013
The remote Faroe
Islands were colonized much earlier than previously believed, and it wasn’t by
the Vikings, according to new research. New archaeological evidence places
human colonization in the 4th to 6th centuries AD, at least
300-500 years earlier than previously demonstrated. Directed by Dr Mike J
Church from Durham University and Símun V Arge from the
National Museum of the Faroe Islands, the study is a part of the
multidisciplinary project “Heart of the Atlantic”, is published in the Quaternary Science Reviews.
The research
challenges the nature, scale and timing of human settlement of the wider North
Atlantic region and has implications for the colonization of similar island
groups across the world. The Faroes were the first stepping stone beyond
Scotland's Shetland Islands for the dispersal of European people across the
North Atlantic that culminated /on the shores of continental North America in
the 11th century AD, about 500 years before Columbus made his famous
voyage. Vikings settled at that time in what is now known as Greenland, having
dispersed from Iceland. They also left a colony in L'Anse aux Meadows in
Newfoundland, Canada.
The research was
carried out on anarchaeological site at Á Sondum on the
island of Sandoy.
Analysis showed an
extensive windblown sand deposit containing patches of burnt peat ash from
human activity, dating human settlement to pre-Viking times. These ash
spreads contained barley grains which were accidentally burnt in domestic
hearths and were then spread by humans onto the windblown sand surface during
the 4th-6th centuries and 6th-8th centuries, a common
practice identified in the North Atlantic during this period to control wind
erosion.
Church said: “There is
now firm archaeological evidence for the human colonization of the
Faroes by people some 300-500 years before the large scale Viking colonization
of the9th century AD, although we don’t yet know who these people were or
where they came from.
“The majority
of archaeological evidence for this early colonization is likely to
have been destroyed by the major Viking invasion, explaining the lack of proof
found in the Faroes for the earlier settlement. This also raises questions
about the timing of human activity on other islands systems where similarly
evidence may have been destroyed.”
Arge added,
“Although we don’t know who the people were that settled here and where they
came from, it is clear that they did prepare peat for use, by cutting, drying
and burning it which indicates they must have stayed here for some time."
“We now have to digest
these dates of this early evidence in relation to other sources and consider
whether there may be other similar sites, elsewhere on the islands, which may
be able to provide us with further structural archaeologicalevidence.”
Durham University and
the National Museum of the Faroe Islands were assisted by the Universities of
Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Bradford, Stirling and Glasgow, the Scottish
Universities Environmental Research Centre and the City University of New
York.
In response to a query
from Spero News,archaeologist Church wrote "There were
hints that there was early settlement from the writing of the Irish Monk Dicuil
in 825 AD and from barley-sized pollen grains in peat and lake profiles dating
to the mid first millennium AD. We plan on returning to the Faroes and will try
and locate some more early archaeological sites, through detailed survey and
sampling at the base of similar coastal erosion sections."
The Faroes are ruled
by Denmark, from whence some of the Vikings originally came, and lie north of
Scotland. Previous studies have found pollen produced by domesticated plants -
which may confirm historical and anecdotal evidence that Irish rovers and
Christian missionaries were present in the islands between 400 to 600 AD and
long before the Nordic invaders
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