Road Trip Through History: The Settlement Center
As I've mentioned before, Iceland is a small place and much of it is mountain desert--think the Rockies without the pines. In what passes for arable land, the present lives on top of and alongside the past. Dig the foundation for a new building and the odds are that you will find the foundation of an old building, and possibly an even older building under that. Not every historical site or archaeological dig can be turned into a museum. With the exception of Thingvellir the idea of a Gettysburg-style expanse of land is impossible. Even historical markers as we know them are few and far between.
It makes for a different type of history-nerd holiday. For much of this trip we saw the places where things happened but not remains or even visual representations of the events. The site of an inland harbor, and where it stood in relation to a major estate, but no reconstruction of Viking ships in harbor.* The place where a famous battle took place, but no maps of troop movements. Instead of events, we've concentrated on the relationship between the nature of the land, its resources, a way of life, and the way it appeared in the Icelandic sagas. Why hot springs were important. Why men didn't fight on horseback. Why the "long fire" in a chieftain's feasting hall was a bed of coals rather than a roaring blaze. Quite frankly, if it weren't for our guide, Nancy Marie Brown,--writer, Viking expert, and fan of all things Icelandic-- we wouldn't have a clue what we were looking at or why it mattered. **
All of which is a long way of saying that I was very pleased to get to the Settlement Center at Borgarnes. I was ready for a museum. The Settlement Center is a small museum with two well-crafted exhibits. One covers the discovery and settlement of Iceland by Vikings from Norway, a period several centuries before the focus of our tour. The second tells the story of one of the most colorful of the Icelandic sagas, the Egils Saga: complete with a gloomy poet-beserker hero, battles, love, betrayal, a wicked sorceress/queen,*** and hidden treasure.
At first I was disappointed to learn that both exhibits required an audio tour, a technology with which I have a long-standing hate-hate relationship. In fact, the audio and physical exhibits worked together beautifully, like 3-dimensional picture books for adults.
Here are some of the details that caught my imagination:
- Early settlers threw carved high columns, intended to be part of their main hall, overboard and settled where they came to shore. This seems like a large-scale version of divination by tossing rune sticks.
- Problematic relationships with the kings of Norway were a constant theme throughout the Viking period.
- A woman could claim as much land as she could drive a cart around in a day.
While we were in Borgarnes we stopped at a second museum that proved to be an unexpected delight. The exhibit Children Throughout a Century is a photographic essay of Icelandic children in the twentieth century, punctuated with physical artifacts. This is the sort of exhibit that can go sadly wrong--and often does. The Borganes Museum clearly has a top-flight curator in charge. Instead of a small collection of local photographs and worn-out toys, dutifully identified with name and place, Children Throughout a Century was a full room of uncaptioned photographs, displayed floor to ceiling in a way that showed changes from decade to decade without diminishing the impact of individual photographs. Artifacts--some directly related to childhood, others emblematic of a way of life--were displayed in shadow boxes hidden behind related photographs on hinged doors. From an American perspective it was fascinating to compare and contrast Icelandic images with those I carry in my head. (And a bit of a shock to realize how dated the images from the years of my childhood looked.) No Viking connection, but definitely worth seeing if you have a chance.
*I’ve written about the design of Viking ships a number of times (though not here on the Margins), but now I understand the importance of that design with my gut and not just my head. They were swift, narrow-hulled ships with true keels and shallow drafts that could sail long distances in the open sea using either oars or sails. Unlike the wider, deeper-hulled ships of western Europe, they could land men upstream from the mouth of a river or on the beach of a small island. The symmetry of the design, with an identical bow and stern and the mast at the exact center, meant the ship could go in either direction. Being able to withdraw from shore without turning around meant the ships could leave as quickly as they landed, increasing the blitzkrieg feel of a Viking raid.
**The dates for next year's tour are already posted. Sign up now.
***Who learned her magic from the Lapps in Finland--a throwaway line that made me want to know more.
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A LAGNIAPPE: For those of you who don't see a history-nerd trip to Iceland in your immediate future (or even those of you who do), I strongly recommend the video series Journey's End as a introduction to the link between the sagas and history.
Road Trip Through History: The Althing, or Medieval Democracy (More Or Less) In Action
We visited the national park at Thingvellir, aka the Assembly Plains, on what our Icelandic hosts assured us was a rare perfect day: sunny and warm enough that we peeled off not only our rain coats but our heavy sweaters.
Located in a geologically unstable rift valley where the American and European tectonic plates meet,* Thingvellir has been described as the heart of Iceland. It was the site at which the 36 chieftains of Iceland, accompanied by their families and followers, met each year for the Althing, or General Assembly, to settle disputes and debate the law. The gathering centered around Iceland's only elected official, the lawspeaker, who recited one-third of Iceland's law code each year in a natural amphitheater known as the Law Rock. But the Althing was more than just a legal gathering, it was a two-week-long market, fair, sporting event, and nationwide party. Sometimes it was a nationwide brawl. Anyone who could come did: thousands of them.
The Althing was a political force from 930 CE to the thirteenth century. As chieftaincies merged through inheritance, purchase, trickery and outright seizure, power between the chieftains became increasingly unbalanced; the gathering became less an exercise of democracy and more an exercise of law by battleaxe. In 1262, hoping for greater stability, the chieftains of the Althing gave away their independence and swore allegiance to King Hakon of Norway. The original Icelanders who fled Norway to avoid the rule of the first Norwegian king were no doubt cursing and kicking the walls in Valhalla.
In the nineteenth century, when Iceland** was caught up in the same Romantic nationalism that swept through Germany and the Austro-Hungarian empire,*** young Icelanders took up the Althing and the Sagas as a symbol of Iceland's heroic and independent past. Thingvellir became the site for nationalist debates and on June 14, 1944, half the country traveled there to hear Iceland's declaration of independence from Denmark.****
Today,the Icelandic parliament is known as the Althing and Thingvellir is the site of Iceland's national celebrations. It is a place of incredible beauty, with a few discreet historic markers for those interested in its past and well laid out trails for those interested in a long walk. Just don't count on a warm dry day, even in July. Sweaters and rain gear are recommended.
*And are now parting company at the rate of 1/4 inch a year, suggesting that eventually Iceland will be torn in two by its own geology. (Interestingly, Kenya's Great Rift Valley is not technically a rift valley in geological terms. The things you learn when you go a-roving!)
**Then part of Denmark rather than Norway. Scandinavia's political history is complicated.
***Note to self: write the dang post on Romantic nationalism.
****Which was occupied by the Nazis at the time and in no position to fight to keep control of a rocky island the size of Kentucky.
Image courtesy of Diego Delso, Wikimedia Commons, License CC-BY-SA 4.0
Road Trip Through History: Reykjavik
My Own True Love and I started and ended our Viking history adventure in a city no Viking ever saw: Reykjavik, literally Smoky (or perhaps steamy) Bay. It is fundamentally a grey city, built of concrete, stone and glass in an array of textures and shapes that save it from bleakness and livened by shots of pure color in the form of small houses made of corrugated metal,* lavish flower beds, and brightly colored rain-gear.
The thing that struck me most about Reykjavik is how modern it is--literally.
According to the party line, Iceland was settled in the 9th century by refugees from Norway, where Harald Fair-Hair had made himself the first king and was busy claiming all the land for the crown.** But the early settlers didn't build towns. They came together each spring in the great gathering known as the Althing to settle disputes and define the law. In later centuries, Icelanders formed temporary settlements along the coast during the fishing season. But all of these settlements scattered when their purpose was done.
Reykjavik the city--as opposed to Reykjavik the chieftain’s manor--was founded in 1751 by a representative of the Danish crown, making it the first permanent town in Iceland. (Just to put this in context: Boston was founded in 1630.) As late as 1845, the city’s population was no more than 1000. Like all colonial cities, it was based on trade. In the case of Reykjavik, that meant cod, first dried and later salted. ***
And speaking of cod, here are some of the highlights of our time in Reykjavik:
- The Maritime Museum focuses on the fishing industry in Icelandic history, from the days when Icelanders built six-oar boats from driftwood and fished with individual lines to modern freezer trawlers. I was particularly taken with an exhibit on Icelandic seawomen from the medieval period to the present. Fascinating stuff.
- 871 +/-2 --a small museum based on an archaeological site that deserves (and will get) its own blog post
- A city-walk led by a self--defined "history graduate": the tour guide was smart, informed, opinionated, and funny. I highly recommend this even for those with no particular interest in history. (Not that this describes any of the Marginites, but you might travel with anyone like that.) They also run a tour called Walk The Crash, led by an economic historian (we really wanted to take it, but we couldn't make the schedule work) and a pub crawl. Here's the link for anyone planning an Iceland trip: http://citywalk.is/
- Licorice. I am not a big licorice fan, but Icelandic licorice is good stuff. And a good thing, too, because the chocolate is forgettable.
*I was astonished to learn that the corrugated metal buildings date from the nineteenth century. I think of it as a modern material. Shows how much I know.
**As always with foundation myths, you have to take this one with a “yes, but”. It is clear that explorers from Norway reached Iceland once or twice before Ingólfur Arnarson established himself on the future site of Reykjavik. Even more interesting from my perspective, there is some evidence that monks from Ireland or the Scottish islands were already in Iceland when the Norwegian settlers arrived, presumably having traveled overseas in their coracles-- small round boats made of willow covered with skin and tar that make Viking longboats look like ocean liners. It is not clear whether the Vikings killed the monks or simply drove them off.
***Fishing is still important in Iceland, but tourists have replaced cod as the country's primary industry.