What do you think of when you hear the word “viking?” Do you think of masculine, Scandinavian brutes pillaging villages? Well, you would not be wrong. However, they damaged more than just the lives of innocent villagers. Now, what do you think of when you hear the word “Iceland?” With its cold, Nordic atmosphere, one would think that Iceland would be able to withstand anything, but that is not the case. Surprisingly, Iceland’s environment is very fragile, and the vikings did their fair share to disrupt it through their settlements and their animals. However, it is difficult to place blame on them, for they had no real way of knowing the damage they were causing with their lifestyle. Even so, their actions left a scar on the small island nation.
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The land had never been subject to settlements, so it was easily eroded. Were the vikings aware of the damages their settlements were causing, or were they aware and just decided to leave the problem for future generations to solve? Either way, these settlements were prompted by tradition, so the vikings would have probably continued with them regardless. Those who immigrated to Iceland made their settlements the same way that they did in their previous homelands, it was all they knew. In the time of the first settlers, sagas were regarded as fact rather than fiction. Because of this, the viking settlers took the lessons they learned from these stories and implemented them in their everyday living, including how they created their settlements. In his article “Enduring Impacts,” Orri Vesteinsson explains how the vikings may have adapted their settlement strategy from the character Skallagrim in Egil’s Saga. Skallagrim was a wealthy chieftain …show more content…
In the settlement period, cattle became more populous than caprines, the reason being that having cattle gave off an aura of wealth. And wealth, of course, begets respect. Since the vikings had just entered this new, unstable climate, they hastened to herd as much cattle as possible so they could cement their social status. However, eventually, cattle became too problematic for most people to keep:
“The Norse settlers preferred cattle over sheep and goats, despite the ecology of Iceland being more suitable for caprines. Sheep could find food free-range for most of the year. By contrast, cattle had to be kept indoors during winter months and provisioned with hay collected during the summer and then stored. As rapid anthropogenic deterioration of the Icelandic environment, including deforestation and erosion (Amorosi et al. 1997), put added subsistence pressure on Icelandic households, an economic focus on cattle was retained only by households with enough wealth and resources to invest in rearing animals that displayed status and provided the culturally preferred feasting meat” (Zori
The land had never been subject to settlements, so it was easily eroded. Were the vikings aware of the damages their settlements were causing, or were they aware and just decided to leave the problem for future generations to solve? Either way, these settlements were prompted by tradition, so the vikings would have probably continued with them regardless. Those who immigrated to Iceland made their settlements the same way that they did in their previous homelands, it was all they knew. In the time of the first settlers, sagas were regarded as fact rather than fiction. Because of this, the viking settlers took the lessons they learned from these stories and implemented them in their everyday living, including how they created their settlements. In his article “Enduring Impacts,” Orri Vesteinsson explains how the vikings may have adapted their settlement strategy from the character Skallagrim in Egil’s Saga. Skallagrim was a wealthy chieftain …show more content…
In the settlement period, cattle became more populous than caprines, the reason being that having cattle gave off an aura of wealth. And wealth, of course, begets respect. Since the vikings had just entered this new, unstable climate, they hastened to herd as much cattle as possible so they could cement their social status. However, eventually, cattle became too problematic for most people to keep:
“The Norse settlers preferred cattle over sheep and goats, despite the ecology of Iceland being more suitable for caprines. Sheep could find food free-range for most of the year. By contrast, cattle had to be kept indoors during winter months and provisioned with hay collected during the summer and then stored. As rapid anthropogenic deterioration of the Icelandic environment, including deforestation and erosion (Amorosi et al. 1997), put added subsistence pressure on Icelandic households, an economic focus on cattle was retained only by households with enough wealth and resources to invest in rearing animals that displayed status and provided the culturally preferred feasting meat” (Zori