Orri Vésteinsson
Biographic Data
| ID | 169803 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Orri Vésteinsson |
| GIVEN NAMES | Orri |
| FAMILY NAME | Vésteinsson |
| SIGNATURE | VÉSTEINSSON O |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Iceland |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3004-646X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 27 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 219 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 27 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1997 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
The Future of Periodization. Dissecting the Legacy of Culture History
This paper discusses the future role of periodization in the wake of recent critiques of culture-historical chronologies concurrent with the rise of high-definition radiocarbon dating. It is argued that periodization has two distinct facets, a narrative function and a dating function, which should be separated. Archaeology may eventually be able to abandon the latter, but not the former. However, the two aspects are closely intertwined and the go…
Dominican Resonances in Medieval Iceland: The Legacy of Bishop Jón Halldórsson of Skálholt, ed. Gunnar Harðarson and Karl G. Johansson
Journal Article Dominican Resonances in Medieval Iceland: The Legacy of Bishop Jón Halldórsson of Skálholt, ed. Gunnar Harðarson and Karl G. Johansson Get access Dominican Resonances in Medieval Iceland: The Legacy of Bishop Jón Halldórsson of Skálholt, ed. Gunnar Harðarson and Karl G. Johansson (Leiden: Brill, 2021; pp. x + 337. €123). Orri Vésteinsson Orri Vésteinsson University of Iceland, Reykjavík, Iceland [email protected] Search for other works b…
Enhancing Radiocarbon Chronologies of Colonization: Chronometric Hygiene Revisited
Accurately dating when people first colonized new areas is vital for understanding the pace of past cultural and environmental changes, including questions of mobility, human impacts and human responses to climate change. Establishing effective chronologies of these events requires the synthesis of multiple radiocarbon ( 14 C) dates. Various “chronometric hygiene” protocols have been used to refine 14 C dating of island colonization, but they can…
Dating religious change: Pagan and Christian in Viking Age Iceland
Mortuary customs frequently provide the principal archaeological evidence for religious identity. Such customs are often seen as a direct reflection of religion and therefore a change of religion should be expected to result in a change in burial rite. There is growing evidence that the relationship is not so straightforward. In this paper we report results from Viking Age Iceland which challenge the previous view of a relatively clear-cut transi…
Dimensions of inequality. Comparing the North Atlantic and the US Southwest
Palaeoenvironmental evidence for woodland conservation in Northern Iceland from settlement to the twentieth century
Narratives of Norse arrival in Iceland highlight the onset of land degradation and loss of woodland cover as major and long-term environmental consequences of settlement. However, deliberate and sustained land resource management in Iceland is increasingly being recognised, and in this paper we assess whether woodland areas were deliberately managed as fuel resources. Our study location is the high status farm site at Hofstaðir in northern Icelan…
The Church in Fourteenth-Century Iceland: The Formation of an Elite Clerical Identity
The Church in Fourteenth-Century Iceland: The Formation of an Elite Clerical Identity. Erika Sigurdson. The Northern World: North Europe and the Baltic c. 400–1700 AD: Peoples, Economies, and Cultures 72. Leiden: Brill, 2016. ix + 208 pp. $128. - Volume 70 Issue 3
Constructing chronologies in Viking Age Iceland: Increasing dating resolution using Bayesian approaches
Kirsi Salonen, Kurt Villads Jensen, and Torstein Jørgensen, editors. Medieval Christianity in the North: New Studies
Scandinavia is one of the most affluent regions of the world, and one manifestation of this is a copious output of high-quality scholarship from a large number of universities and research institutions. There is a long and venerable tradition of communicating Scandinavian research internationally, based on a conviction that Scandinavian evidence has relevance and appeal beyond the region's borders. In archaeology this tradition goes back to the n…
The Colonization of Iceland in Light of Isotope Analyses
A review of the mounting archaeological evidence for the colonization of Iceland suggests that the whole country was occupied within a couple of decades towards the end of the 9th century AD. Analyses of strontium in human bones show, however, that immigrants continued to arrive in Iceland throughout the 10th century. Here we discuss this apparent contradiction, suggesting that while continued immigration may have been needed to sustain the popul…
What is in a Booth? Material Symbolism at Icelandic Assembly Sites
Booths are a distinctive feature of the assembly sites established in Iceland in the Viking Age. The study of Icelandic assemblies has a long pedigree. Although there have been significant advances in this field in recent years, the booths remain enigmatic, both in terms of their dating and their function. In this paper, it is argued that instead of viewing the booths primarily as functional solutions to the problem of camping in the open, it is …
Cultural adaptation, compounding vulnerabilities and conjunctures in Norse Greenland
Norse Greenland has been seen as a classic case of maladaptation by an inflexible temperate zone society extending into the arctic and collapse driven by climate change. This paper, however, recognizes the successful arctic adaptation achieved in Norse Greenland and argues that, although climate change had impacts, the end of Norse settlement can only be truly understood as a complex socioenvironmental system that includes local and interregional…
Reply to Comments from James H. Barrett, Kevin J. Edwards, Jón Viðar Sigurðsson, Guðrún Sveinbjarnardóttir and Przemysław Urbańczyk
Anders Winroth. The Conversion of Scandinavia: Vikings, Merchants, and Missionaries in the Remaking of Northern Europe
There is no universal theory that explains why some religions have spread across the globe while most have not. Nor can a single explanation be applied to the spread of any one of the three large diffusing religions of Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam, provided we disregard the ideas each one has about its own inherent superiority. Students of religious change are therefore normally confined to studying particular episodes of conversion. From th…
Shieling Areas: Historical Grazing Pressures and Landscape Responses in Northern Iceland
The Peopling of Iceland
In recent years intensive archaeological research on the Viking Age in Iceland has produced much new evidence supporting a late 9th century colonization of the country. It can now be stated not only that people had arrived in Iceland before AD 870 but also that comprehensive occupation only took place after that date. The increased temporal resolution of the new archaeological data not only allows the characterization of different phases of the c…
Court Sites of Arctic Norway: Remains of Thing Sites and Representations of Political Consolidation Processes in the Northern Germanic World during the First Millennium AD
The court sites situated in the coastal areas of Norway have been the theme of discussion in several publications, including Norwegian Archaeological Review. So far, however, none of the authors has succeeded in gaining overwhelming support for their interpretation. Based on case studies of North Norwegian court sites and comparisons with Icelandic evidence, this paper endorses a long-standing, but still widely disregarded, interpretation suggest…
Parishes and Communities in Norse Greenland
The isolation of the two Norse Greenlandic settlements, from each other as well as from the rest of the world, is a well rehearsed topic. Ideas about communications within the two settlements are, on the other hand, not much developed. One way of looking at intra-settlement communication is through the parish system. The parishes arguably reflect the community structure, but they also provided the framework for much of the social interaction in t…
Local‐scale adaptations: A modeled assessment of soil, landscape, microclimatic, and management factors in Norse home‐field productivities
Adaptation of farming practices to inherent site conditions was essential to the success of Norse colonization in pristine landscapes. A key factor in the initial success of colonization, or landnám, of Iceland was management of the area adjacent to the domestic dwelling, the home‐field, to provide fodder for over‐wintering livestock. In this paper we examine three settlement home‐fields in the Mývatn and Laxá valley area of northeast Iceland. Co…
A Divided Society: Peasants and the Aristocracy in Medieval Iceland
Abandoned Farms, Volcanic Impacts, and Woodland Management: "Revisiting Þjórsárdalur, the "Pompeii Of Iceland
Geomorphological maps and nine soil profiles containing 92 tephra layers have been examined to explore the nature of medieval environmental change in Þjórsárdalur, Iceland, where farms are thought to have been abandoned after the massive tephra fall from the eruption of Hekla in 1104 A.D. This paper presents evidence for continued human activity in the area in the two centuries following the 1104 A.D. eruption, indicating that continued utilizati…
Landscapes of Settlement in Northern Iceland: Historical Ecology of Human Impact and Climate Fluctuation on the Millennial Scale
Early settlement in the North Atlantic produced complex interactions of culture and nature. The sustained program of interdisciplinary collaboration is intended to focus on ninth- to 13th-century sites and landscapes in the highland interior lake basin of Mývatn in Iceland and to contribute a long-term perspective to larger issues of sustainable resource use, soil erosion, and the historical ecology of global change
Creating a Past: A Historiography of the Settlement of Iceland
This volume explores the Viking Age colonization and exploration of the North Atlantic, from Arctic Norway to Vinland in eastern North America. Its contributors, predominately archaeologists by training, bring new evidence and an interdisciplinary perspective to a subject often dominated by sources of variable historicity. They explore the creation and transformation of ethnicity in new lands - some occupied, others empty. They also address the h…
Fuel resource utilisation in landscapes of settlement
The Christianization of Iceland: Priests, Power, and Social Change 1000-1300
Landscapes of Settlement in Northern Iceland: Historical Ecology of Human Impact and Climate Fluctuation on the Millennial Scale
Early settlement in the North Atlantic produced complex interactions of culture and nature. The sustained program of interdisciplinary collaboration is intended to focus on ninth- to 13th-century sites and landscapes in the highland interior lake basin of Mývatn in Iceland and to contribute a long-term perspective to larger issues of sustainable resource use, soil erosion, and the historical ecology of global change
Fuel resource utilisation in landscapes of settlement
The Peopling of Iceland
In recent years intensive archaeological research on the Viking Age in Iceland has produced much new evidence supporting a late 9th century colonization of the country. It can now be stated not only that people had arrived in Iceland before AD 870 but also that comprehensive occupation only took place after that date. The increased temporal resolution of the new archaeological data not only allows the characterization of different phases of the c…
Dimensions of inequality. Comparing the North Atlantic and the US Southwest
Abandoned Farms, Volcanic Impacts, and Woodland Management: "Revisiting Þjórsárdalur, the "Pompeii Of Iceland
Geomorphological maps and nine soil profiles containing 92 tephra layers have been examined to explore the nature of medieval environmental change in Þjórsárdalur, Iceland, where farms are thought to have been abandoned after the massive tephra fall from the eruption of Hekla in 1104 A.D. This paper presents evidence for continued human activity in the area in the two centuries following the 1104 A.D. eruption, indicating that continued utilizati…
Local‐scale adaptations: A modeled assessment of soil, landscape, microclimatic, and management factors in Norse home‐field productivities
Adaptation of farming practices to inherent site conditions was essential to the success of Norse colonization in pristine landscapes. A key factor in the initial success of colonization, or landnám, of Iceland was management of the area adjacent to the domestic dwelling, the home‐field, to provide fodder for over‐wintering livestock. In this paper we examine three settlement home‐fields in the Mývatn and Laxá valley area of northeast Iceland. Co…
Enhancing Radiocarbon Chronologies of Colonization: Chronometric Hygiene Revisited
Accurately dating when people first colonized new areas is vital for understanding the pace of past cultural and environmental changes, including questions of mobility, human impacts and human responses to climate change. Establishing effective chronologies of these events requires the synthesis of multiple radiocarbon ( 14 C) dates. Various “chronometric hygiene” protocols have been used to refine 14 C dating of island colonization, but they can…
Constructing chronologies in Viking Age Iceland: Increasing dating resolution using Bayesian approaches
The Colonization of Iceland in Light of Isotope Analyses
A review of the mounting archaeological evidence for the colonization of Iceland suggests that the whole country was occupied within a couple of decades towards the end of the 9th century AD. Analyses of strontium in human bones show, however, that immigrants continued to arrive in Iceland throughout the 10th century. Here we discuss this apparent contradiction, suggesting that while continued immigration may have been needed to sustain the popul…
Shieling Areas: Historical Grazing Pressures and Landscape Responses in Northern Iceland
Court Sites of Arctic Norway: Remains of Thing Sites and Representations of Political Consolidation Processes in the Northern Germanic World during the First Millennium AD
The court sites situated in the coastal areas of Norway have been the theme of discussion in several publications, including Norwegian Archaeological Review. So far, however, none of the authors has succeeded in gaining overwhelming support for their interpretation. Based on case studies of North Norwegian court sites and comparisons with Icelandic evidence, this paper endorses a long-standing, but still widely disregarded, interpretation suggest…
Parishes and Communities in Norse Greenland
The isolation of the two Norse Greenlandic settlements, from each other as well as from the rest of the world, is a well rehearsed topic. Ideas about communications within the two settlements are, on the other hand, not much developed. One way of looking at intra-settlement communication is through the parish system. The parishes arguably reflect the community structure, but they also provided the framework for much of the social interaction in t…
Dating religious change: Pagan and Christian in Viking Age Iceland
Mortuary customs frequently provide the principal archaeological evidence for religious identity. Such customs are often seen as a direct reflection of religion and therefore a change of religion should be expected to result in a change in burial rite. There is growing evidence that the relationship is not so straightforward. In this paper we report results from Viking Age Iceland which challenge the previous view of a relatively clear-cut transi…
HofstaÐir revisited∗
Since it was first excavated in 1908 the great hall at HofstaÐir, NE‐Iceland has held a central position in the archaeology of Nordic pre‐Christian religion. In the first half of the century it was hailed as a type site for Nordic temples, but following a second excavation in 1965 it has become a prototype for the so‐called temple farms. The more recent investigations at Hof‐staÐir, introduced in the report, have shed new light on the nature of t…
What is in a Booth? Material Symbolism at Icelandic Assembly Sites
Booths are a distinctive feature of the assembly sites established in Iceland in the Viking Age. The study of Icelandic assemblies has a long pedigree. Although there have been significant advances in this field in recent years, the booths remain enigmatic, both in terms of their dating and their function. In this paper, it is argued that instead of viewing the booths primarily as functional solutions to the problem of camping in the open, it is …
The Future of Periodization. Dissecting the Legacy of Culture History
This paper discusses the future role of periodization in the wake of recent critiques of culture-historical chronologies concurrent with the rise of high-definition radiocarbon dating. It is argued that periodization has two distinct facets, a narrative function and a dating function, which should be separated. Archaeology may eventually be able to abandon the latter, but not the former. However, the two aspects are closely intertwined and the go…
HofstaÐir revisited∗
Since it was first excavated in 1908 the great hall at HofstaÐir, NE‐Iceland has held a central position in the archaeology of Nordic pre‐Christian religion. In the first half of the century it was hailed as a type site for Nordic temples, but following a second excavation in 1965 it has become a prototype for the so‐called temple farms. The more recent investigations at Hof‐staÐir, introduced in the report, have shed new light on the nature of t…
The Christianization of Iceland: Priests, Power, and Social Change, 1000-1300
"In this first historical study of high-medieval Iceland to be published in English, Orri Vesteinsson investigates the influence of the Christian church on the formation of the earliest state structures in Iceland, from the conversion in 1000 to the union with Norway in 1262"--Jacket.
The Christianization of Iceland: Priests, Power, and Social Change 1000-1300
Creating a Past: A Historiography of the Settlement of Iceland
This volume explores the Viking Age colonization and exploration of the North Atlantic, from Arctic Norway to Vinland in eastern North America. Its contributors, predominately archaeologists by training, bring new evidence and an interdisciplinary perspective to a subject often dominated by sources of variable historicity. They explore the creation and transformation of ethnicity in new lands - some occupied, others empty. They also address the h…
Fuel resource utilisation in landscapes of settlement
A Divided Society: Peasants and the Aristocracy in Medieval Iceland
Abandoned Farms, Volcanic Impacts, and Woodland Management: "Revisiting Þjórsárdalur, the "Pompeii Of Iceland
Geomorphological maps and nine soil profiles containing 92 tephra layers have been examined to explore the nature of medieval environmental change in Þjórsárdalur, Iceland, where farms are thought to have been abandoned after the massive tephra fall from the eruption of Hekla in 1104 A.D. This paper presents evidence for continued human activity in the area in the two centuries following the 1104 A.D. eruption, indicating that continued utilizati…
Landscapes of Settlement in Northern Iceland: Historical Ecology of Human Impact and Climate Fluctuation on the Millennial Scale
Early settlement in the North Atlantic produced complex interactions of culture and nature. The sustained program of interdisciplinary collaboration is intended to focus on ninth- to 13th-century sites and landscapes in the highland interior lake basin of Mývatn in Iceland and to contribute a long-term perspective to larger issues of sustainable resource use, soil erosion, and the historical ecology of global change
Local‐scale adaptations: A modeled assessment of soil, landscape, microclimatic, and management factors in Norse home‐field productivities
Adaptation of farming practices to inherent site conditions was essential to the success of Norse colonization in pristine landscapes. A key factor in the initial success of colonization, or landnám, of Iceland was management of the area adjacent to the domestic dwelling, the home‐field, to provide fodder for over‐wintering livestock. In this paper we examine three settlement home‐fields in the Mývatn and Laxá valley area of northeast Iceland. Co…
Parishes and Communities in Norse Greenland
The isolation of the two Norse Greenlandic settlements, from each other as well as from the rest of the world, is a well rehearsed topic. Ideas about communications within the two settlements are, on the other hand, not much developed. One way of looking at intra-settlement communication is through the parish system. The parishes arguably reflect the community structure, but they also provided the framework for much of the social interaction in t…
Court Sites of Arctic Norway: Remains of Thing Sites and Representations of Political Consolidation Processes in the Northern Germanic World during the First Millennium AD
The court sites situated in the coastal areas of Norway have been the theme of discussion in several publications, including Norwegian Archaeological Review. So far, however, none of the authors has succeeded in gaining overwhelming support for their interpretation. Based on case studies of North Norwegian court sites and comparisons with Icelandic evidence, this paper endorses a long-standing, but still widely disregarded, interpretation suggest…
Cultural adaptation, compounding vulnerabilities and conjunctures in Norse Greenland
Norse Greenland has been seen as a classic case of maladaptation by an inflexible temperate zone society extending into the arctic and collapse driven by climate change. This paper, however, recognizes the successful arctic adaptation achieved in Norse Greenland and argues that, although climate change had impacts, the end of Norse settlement can only be truly understood as a complex socioenvironmental system that includes local and interregional…
Reply to Comments from James H. Barrett, Kevin J. Edwards, Jón Viðar Sigurðsson, Guðrún Sveinbjarnardóttir and Przemysław Urbańczyk
Anders Winroth. The Conversion of Scandinavia: Vikings, Merchants, and Missionaries in the Remaking of Northern Europe
There is no universal theory that explains why some religions have spread across the globe while most have not. Nor can a single explanation be applied to the spread of any one of the three large diffusing religions of Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam, provided we disregard the ideas each one has about its own inherent superiority. Students of religious change are therefore normally confined to studying particular episodes of conversion. From th…
Shieling Areas: Historical Grazing Pressures and Landscape Responses in Northern Iceland
The Peopling of Iceland
In recent years intensive archaeological research on the Viking Age in Iceland has produced much new evidence supporting a late 9th century colonization of the country. It can now be stated not only that people had arrived in Iceland before AD 870 but also that comprehensive occupation only took place after that date. The increased temporal resolution of the new archaeological data not only allows the characterization of different phases of the c…
What is in a Booth? Material Symbolism at Icelandic Assembly Sites
Booths are a distinctive feature of the assembly sites established in Iceland in the Viking Age. The study of Icelandic assemblies has a long pedigree. Although there have been significant advances in this field in recent years, the booths remain enigmatic, both in terms of their dating and their function. In this paper, it is argued that instead of viewing the booths primarily as functional solutions to the problem of camping in the open, it is …
Kirsi Salonen, Kurt Villads Jensen, and Torstein Jørgensen, editors. Medieval Christianity in the North: New Studies
Scandinavia is one of the most affluent regions of the world, and one manifestation of this is a copious output of high-quality scholarship from a large number of universities and research institutions. There is a long and venerable tradition of communicating Scandinavian research internationally, based on a conviction that Scandinavian evidence has relevance and appeal beyond the region's borders. In archaeology this tradition goes back to the n…
The Colonization of Iceland in Light of Isotope Analyses
A review of the mounting archaeological evidence for the colonization of Iceland suggests that the whole country was occupied within a couple of decades towards the end of the 9th century AD. Analyses of strontium in human bones show, however, that immigrants continued to arrive in Iceland throughout the 10th century. Here we discuss this apparent contradiction, suggesting that while continued immigration may have been needed to sustain the popul…
Constructing chronologies in Viking Age Iceland: Increasing dating resolution using Bayesian approaches
The Church in Fourteenth-Century Iceland: The Formation of an Elite Clerical Identity
The Church in Fourteenth-Century Iceland: The Formation of an Elite Clerical Identity. Erika Sigurdson. The Northern World: North Europe and the Baltic c. 400–1700 AD: Peoples, Economies, and Cultures 72. Leiden: Brill, 2016. ix + 208 pp. $128. - Volume 70 Issue 3
Palaeoenvironmental evidence for woodland conservation in Northern Iceland from settlement to the twentieth century
Narratives of Norse arrival in Iceland highlight the onset of land degradation and loss of woodland cover as major and long-term environmental consequences of settlement. However, deliberate and sustained land resource management in Iceland is increasingly being recognised, and in this paper we assess whether woodland areas were deliberately managed as fuel resources. Our study location is the high status farm site at Hofstaðir in northern Icelan…
Enhancing Radiocarbon Chronologies of Colonization: Chronometric Hygiene Revisited
Accurately dating when people first colonized new areas is vital for understanding the pace of past cultural and environmental changes, including questions of mobility, human impacts and human responses to climate change. Establishing effective chronologies of these events requires the synthesis of multiple radiocarbon ( 14 C) dates. Various “chronometric hygiene” protocols have been used to refine 14 C dating of island colonization, but they can…
Dating religious change: Pagan and Christian in Viking Age Iceland
Mortuary customs frequently provide the principal archaeological evidence for religious identity. Such customs are often seen as a direct reflection of religion and therefore a change of religion should be expected to result in a change in burial rite. There is growing evidence that the relationship is not so straightforward. In this paper we report results from Viking Age Iceland which challenge the previous view of a relatively clear-cut transi…
Dimensions of inequality. Comparing the North Atlantic and the US Southwest
Archaeology (21 works) · History (18 works) · Geography (16 works) · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies (13 works) · Geology and Paleoclimatology Research (13 works) · Historical and Archaeological Studies (13 works) · Geology (8 works) · Law (8 works) · Political science (8 works) · Politics (6 works)