Was it for walrus? Viking Age settlement and medieval walrus ivory trade in Iceland and Greenland

Authors

Karen M. Frei, National Museum of Denmark
Ashley N. Coutu, University of Cape Town
Konrad Smiarowski, CUNY Graduate Center
Ramona Harrison, CUNY Hunter College
Christian K. Madsen, National Museum of Denmark
Jette Arneborg, National Museum of Denmark
Robert Frei, University of Copenhagen
Gardar Guðmundsson, Archaeological Institute of Iceland
Søren M. Sindbækg, Aarhus University
James Woollett, Université Laval in Quebec
Steven Hartman, Mid Sweden University
Megan Hicks, CUNY Hunter College
Thomas McGovern, CUNY Hunter CollegeFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

4-20-2015

Abstract

Walrus-tusk ivory and walrus-hide rope were highly desired goods in Viking Age north-west Europe. New finds of walrus bone and ivory in early Viking Age contexts in Iceland are concentrated in the south-west, and suggest extensive exploitation of nearby walrus for meat, hide and ivory during the first century of settlement. In Greenland, archaeofauna suggest a very different specialized long-distance hunting of the much larger walrus populations in the Disko Bay area that brought mainly ivory to the settlement areas and eventually to European markets. New lead isotopic analysis of archaeological walrus ivory and bone from Greenland and Iceland offers a tool for identifying possible source regions of walrus ivory during the early Middle Ages. This opens possibilities for assessing the development and relative importance of hunting grounds from the point of view of exported products.

Comments

This work was originally published in World Archaeology, available at DOI: 10.1080/00438243.2015.1025912