Irrigation at Garðar, SW Greenland and its NorthEuropean context

Eva Panagiotakopulu • Paul C. Buckland

Received: 10 October 2011 / Accepted: 20 April 2012� Springer Science + Business Media B.V. 2012

Abstract Southwest Greenland was settled, largely from Iceland, at the end of the tenth

century. Agriculture, based upon secondary products from domestic animals, lasted until

the fifteenth century when the last farms were finally abandoned. From the twelfth century,

the inhabitants had their own bishop and cathedral at Garðar in the more southerly Eastern

Settlement and this, with several other sites, shows evidence of agricultural innovation in

the use of irrigation as well as manuring of hayfields. This paper attempts to place the

Greenland irrigated fields in their Icelandic and North European context, suggesting that

their origins lie in the reorganisation consequent upon the arrival of the first resident bishop

from Scandinavia in 1126 and his ability to call upon labour beyond that available on the

episcopal farm.

Keywords Greenland � Norse � Irrigation � Palaeoecology � Medieval � Europe

Introduction

Recent palaeoecological research at Igaliku, the site of the medieval episcopal Seat of

Garðar in South West Greenland, has provided evidence for a system of irrigation and

manuring of the associated farm’s hayfields (Buckland et al. 2009; Panagiotakopulu et al.

in press). This evidence expands upon previous archaeological and geoarchaeological

results (Arneborg 2005; Adderley and Simpson 2006), which suggest the widespread

adoption of similar methods elsewhere in South West Greenland. It has been argued that

this change in land use reflects the organisation of the estate by the first Bishop, Arnald,

sent out from Lund in 1126 (Buckland et al. 2009). After four hundred years of occupation,

E. PanagiotakopuluDepartment of Geography, School of Geosciences, University of Edinburgh, Drummond Street,Edinburgh EH8 9XP, Scotland, UKe-mail: eva.p@ed.ac.uk

P. C. Buckland (&)20 Den Bank Close, Crosspool, Sheffield S10 5PA, UKe-mail: Paul.buckland@bugscep.com

123

Water HistDOI 10.1007/s12685-012-0058-7

all sites had been deserted by sometime in the fifteenth century, and this process can

probably be correlated with an abrupt change in the peat stratigraphy at Igaliku. The

origins of the Greenland irrigation systems are difficult to trace since they appear earlier

than similar irrigation systems evidenced in Norway, and before the widespread adoption

of patterns of flooding influenced by English water meadows. Partly, this reflects the

survival of archaeological evidence in Greenland, whilst it has largely been overprinted

elsewhere. This paper examines historical and archaeological evidence for systems of

irrigation in medieval northern Europe in relation to the Garðar field results.

Throughout most of the North Atlantic region, from the head of the Gulf of Bothnia in

the East to Greenland and the Davis Strait in the West, the balance between precipitation

and evapotranspiration is such that water management concerns largely the removal of

excess water from the fields rather than its deliberate guiding onto the cultivated areas to

alleviate drought. It is only in unusual years that significant parts of this region suffer from

potential water deficits. Such comments are of course only valid for systems which predate

the modern agri–industrial landscapes, where increased yields are often dependent upon

irrigation water, often pumped from deep aquifers the recharge time of which is sufficiently

long for depletion to be treated as an SEP, someone else’s problem (sensu Adams 1989). In

the past, agricultural systems were essentially rain-fed relying upon systems tuned to the

vagaries of the annual cycle, and where too little, or too much precipitation at the wrong

time of year often led to widespread famine. The weather of the early years of the four-

teenth century provides a particularly good example (Dawson et al. 2007) with famine

reported from the Reykjanes Peninsula of southwest Iceland to northern Italy (Jordan

1996). Whilst communities were never immune to the unpredictability of individual years,

high rainfall and a potential water deficit, in those limited areas where either of the norm,

were often countered by agricultural innovation, either by drainage or by irrigation,

techniques which were not necessarily mutually exclusive. High rainfall in itself leads to

the leaching of essential nutrients from the soils, to acidification and podsolization, ulti-

mately causing waterlogging and development of acid mires, a process which has been

exacerbated by farming since at least the Neolithic in Western Europe (cf. Moore 1993).

Paring and burning, then spreading the ashes on the arable fields, provided a means by

which farming could be maintained on the formerly widespread heathlands of the west

(e.g. Hjelle et al. 2010), whilst northern forested landscapes often relied upon swidden,

small temporary clearances achieved by judicious use of fire (Lehtonen and Huttunen

1997). In both cases, however, the incremental drain on nutrients resulted in declining

yields and ultimate abandonment, unless the process could be slowed by the addition of

manure in the form of mineral or animal fertilisers. The latter has a long prehistory, which

probably extends back to the origins of agriculture (Guttmann et al. 2005), and can be seen

in the quasi-random scatter of archaeological materials of all ages across many landscapes.

The combination of manuring with irrigation, however, into what became a sophisticated

system of water management, known in England, as water meadows, has been seen by

many workers as a specifically post-medieval English development which later spread to

Scandinavia (e.g. Emanuelsson and Moller 1990; Vasari and Vaananen 1986).

Such an interpretation, however, creates an anomaly of the irrigation systems first noted

by Ingstad (1960)(see also Krogh 1974) associated with farms in South West Greenland

(Fig. 1), the last of which had been finally abandoned at sometime in the fifteenth century

(Seaver 2010). Arneborg (2005) has reviewed the evidence for irrigation channels in Norse

Greenland, summarising the evidence from the sites, all bar one in the more southerly

Eastern Settlement, and drawing parallels with post-medieval systems in Gudbrandsdalen

in southern Norway. More recently, the cutting of drainage ditches immediately adjacent to

E. Panagiotakopulu and P. C. Buckland

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the cathedral and episcopal farm at Igaliku, Norse Garðar (Figs. 2, 3), has allowed the

examination of extensive deposits which indicate that irrigation of the hayfield of the farm

was associated with extensive manuring (Buckland et al. 2009; Panagiotakopulu et al. in

press), and this leads to a review of the historical evidence for medieval systems of

irrigation north of the Alps in mainland Europe and in Iceland.

Fig. 1 The Norse Eastern Settlement, SW Greenland. (redrawn by Anastasios Panagiotakopoulos)

Irrigation at Garðar, SW Greenland, and its North European context

123

Garðar

The system of dams across the small streams draining from the hills to the north of the

episcopal residence at Garðar (Fig. 2) had been noted by Nørlund (1929, p. 109) during the

archaeological investigation of the cathedral and associated farm, but it was some thirty

years before the Norwegian Helge Ingstad recognised something with which he was

familiar from his homeland. Nørlund had commented on the large size of the two principal

byres on the farm, which had a capacity of between 75 and one hundred head of cattle. This

stands in marked contrast with the majority of sites. At the probable farm of the chieftain at

Brattahlıð (Qassiarssuk), apparently divided into two farms in the later medieval period,

the stalls in the four byres indicate about forty animals (Nørlund 1936, p. 67), and for the

smaller farms about five cattle were more usual. Whilst his rough calculation, based on

Icelandic data, of 2 500 kilograms of hay per animal to enable them to be overwintered

is perhaps excessive in view of the small size of Greenlandic Norse cattle

Fig. 2 Irrigation at Garðar, SW Greenland (redrawn by Anastasios Panagiotakopoulos from Ingstad 1960and Krogh 1974). The sampling locations are indicated by (?)

E. Panagiotakopulu and P. C. Buckland

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(cf. Panagiotakopulu et al. 2007), it does provide an indication of the scale of hay col-

lection necessary to maintain the farm. Compared with other Greenland farms, Garðar had

access to a large territory (Figs. 4, 5), including woodland across the fiord, where the early

fifteenth century description of Greenland by Ivar Barðarson (Halldorsson 1978, p. 135)

notes that the episcopal estate grazed its animals, but in a largely dairy-based system,

collection of sufficient fodder for the long winters was critical to survival (Amorosi et al.

1998). The size of the byres therefore is all the more impressive when it is noted that

(contra Nørlund 1929) there is no evidence that farmers had access to wheeled vehicles,

and all transport of materials had to be by boat and on the backs of men and horses or on

sleds, pulled by either; it is evident that the See could call on labour resources beyond the

population of its own farm.

Manuring to increase productivity of hayfields has been noted on several farms in both

the Eastern and Western Settlement in Greenland, both by isotopic study of the modern

grassland (Commisso and Nelson 2010) and geoarchaeological examination of sediments

(Schweger 1998; Ross and Zutter 2007). In addition, artefact scatters have been noted in

test pits in the former hayfield at Sandnes (Kilaarsarfik), the principal church farm in the

Fig. 3 Sample locations (?) and the recently cut ditches in relation to the site of the Norse farm (� GoogleEarth). The grey infilled structure to the top left of the image is the medieval cathedral, with a complex offarm buildings between it and the modern building bottom left. The Bishop’s well lies roughly central undera modern structure, with the stone-flagged drain leading away from it

Irrigation at Garðar, SW Greenland, and its North European context

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Fig. 4 The modern hayfield at Igaliku looking south-west. The location of the medieval cathedral and farmof Garðar is indicated by an arrow. Photo: E Panagiotakopulu (July, 2005)

Fig. 5 The head of the fiord, Igalikup Kangerlua, viewed across the hayfields adjacent to the site of Garðar.Much of the soil loss evident is a result of recent overgrazing and in the medieval period most of this wouldhave been available as pasture and sources of additional hay. Photo: E Panagiotakopulu (July, 2005)

E. Panagiotakopulu and P. C. Buckland

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Western Settlement (Arneborg and McGovern, Unpubl.). The preservation of organic

materials at Garðar, however, provides more extensive evidence. Artefactual material

recovered from the upcast of modern ditch sections, includes a tally stick, fragments of

stave-built vessels, a possible prayer stick, wood-working debris and bone and stone

fragments. These are scattered over 100 m of ditch section and occur in a 0.5-m thin silty

organic deposit which extends out from the farm and sits over a gently sloping terrace of

sandy silt with pebbles, part of an early Holocene raised beach system (cf. Sparrenbom

et al. 2006). The sharp transition from silt to peat at the base of sequence (Figs. 6, 7, 8)

over the whole of the exposure indicates that any earlier organic sediments or turf layer had

been removed. The most probable reason for this is the stripping of turf for use in the

construction of the farm buildings. This in itself could have led to erosion, but the pal-

aeoecological evidence preserved in the deposits immediately over this mineral substrate

indicates neither the growth of peat nor the development of a closely grazed sward as the

farm’s domestic stock modified the landscape, but the spreading of farm and household

waste as manure, creating what was essentially a plaggen soil.

The diversion of water flow off the hills into a series of leats with small dams has been

re-mapped and interpreted most recently by Knut Krogh (1974), who also sectioned one of

the dams. His reconstruction shows (Fig. 2) a principal channel following the contour with

subsidiary leats running downslope to dams above the hayfields and a further contoured

channel 100 m west of the farm. Surplus water from the farm’s main water source, the so-

called Bishop’s Spring, immediately east of the main blocks of buildings, also appears to

have been led over the hayfield. This interpretation is supported by the palaeoecological

evidence, wherein a high proportion of aquatic insects is mixed with the eutrophic

assemblage of insects which could have maintained populations inside the farm buildings

(Panagiotakopulu et al. in press).

Interpretation of the palaeoecological content of anthropogenic deposits is difficult.

Greig (1982) noted this in relation to the numerous sources which make up urban

archaeological deposits, implying that any approach which regards the deposits as accu-

mulating in the same manner as natural ones, is likely to be flawed, in that middens and

Fig. 6 Ditch Section 1 looking NW, near the so-called Bishop’s Spring at Garðar. The sharp contactbetween the dark grey silty peat of the plaggen and the underlying silts is apparent. The irregular boundary,a result of the removal of turves (see text) is also apparent. Photo: E Panagiotakopulu (July, 2005)

Irrigation at Garðar, SW Greenland, and its North European context

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Fig. 7 Ditch (Section 2). Within the darker more humified peat and organic silt which make up themanuring layer bones, wood and stone are evident, in particular, the angular block of red, Igaliku Sandstoneclose to the top of the deposit. The surface below the abrupt change to a lighter, more organic peat asmanuring was abandoned has been cleaned off for sampling and the white arrows indicated the location ofthe two samples taken for AMS dating (see text). Length of spade is 95 cm. Photo: E Panagiotakopulu (July,2005)

Fig. 8 Ditch (Section 3). Thissite lies out in the hayfield mostdistant from the Norse farm. Theplaggen nature of the soil,however, is still evident, as is thesharp upper contact with theoverlying peat. Photo: EPanagiotakopulu (July, 2005)

E. Panagiotakopulu and P. C. Buckland

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floors not only accumulate intermittently but also incorporate material from very diverse

sources, from human and animal faeces to flooring materials, imported peat and turves (cf.

Deforce et al. 2007). Such deposits may have been heavily bioturbated by the feet of the

farm’s occupants, both human and domestic, and whilst such disturbance may occasionally

be detected in the field or in large format thin section, it is often invisible. These problems

extend to plaggen soils (cf. Groenman-van Waateringe 1992), and close interval sampling

may give a false sense of accuracy. Given this caveat, the two AMS dates of AD 1040–1250

(calibration of SUERC-8575) at the base (Fig. 7) and AD 1290–1400 (calibration of SU-

ERC-8576; for details, see Buckland et al. 2009) from the top (Fig. 7), fall within the

expected range for occupation at Garðar.

The insect faunas from the Garðar soils, with a mix of aquatic, terrestrial and strongly

synanthropic elements, support a pattern of periodically flooded, manured fields. Of the

sources of the manure, the ectoparasites of both sheep and humans supplement the arte-

factual debris derived from human as well as animal occupation, and this extends

throughout the sampled sections (Figs. 6, 7, 8; Panagiotakopulu et al. in press).

In the three sections (Figs. 6, 7, 8), the end of the process of manuring is signalled by a

marked change in the nature of deposition and the upper part of the sequence is dominated

by a peat, in which the insect faunas are purely natural, indicating pools developing in the

permanent wetlands which replaced the pasture. Mire development continued until the re-

establishment of a farm at Igaliku in the nineteenth and twentieth century and recent

drainage has converted wetland to grassland, with a consequent loss of the fossil record. It

is significant that there is no evidence for a gradual cessation of the processes of manuring

and irrigation, and it can be inferred that agriculture, if not occupation at Garðar appears to

have been ended abruptly. The latest documentary reference to Greenland occurs in a

document of 1410, which indicates a normally functioning late medieval society with both

a wedding and witch burning (Seaver 2010). How long occupation continued thereafter

remains unknown, and definite contact, this time with incoming Inuit bearers of the Thule

culture, only begins again with the arrival in Greenland of the Danish-Norwegian mis-

sionary Hans Egede in 1721.

The context of the Garðar irrigation

One of the problems of archaeological interpretation is an inevitable tendency to ascribe

excavated evidence to historical or partly mythological figures. Greenland’s foundation

myth of exploration by an outlawed Eirik the Red from Iceland, and its subsequent set-

tlement under his direction from AD 985/6 onwards (Halldorsson 1981), has rarely been

questioned. The excavators of the site at Qassiarsuq (Nørlund and Stenberger 1934) had no

problem in identifying it with Eirik’s Brattahlıð, and whilst the location has recently been

disputed (Guldager 2002), the general view of the Greenland sagas has been acceptance in

broad outline as historical fact if not in detail. Some of the most recent commentators are

more circumspect, and Lonnroth (2008) suggests that scholars (as opposed to archaeolo-

gists) would not trust the sagas as sources for the settlement of Iceland, and by inference

therefore of Greenland. The structural evidence of the cathedral at Igaliku confirms the

location of Garðar, but not the detail, and the link between the first bishop at Garðar,

Arnald, sent out from the archbishopric of Lund, and the irrigation ditches is circumstantial

at best. The system may have been initiated by Arnald or members of his entourage,

perhaps a reeve with relevant knowledge, or a later bishop. If the evidence of Einar

Sokkason’s Saga is accepted—and there is internal detail which implies knowledge of

Irrigation at Garðar, SW Greenland, and its North European context

123

local topography—Arnald overwintered in Iceland in 1125, at Oddi with Sæmundur Sig-

fusson. Sæmundr froði (=the wise) had travelled widely in Europe and had been educated

in Franconia (Vesteinsson 2000), now in southwest Germany. He is likely to have been

aware of monastic utilisation of water sources in the great abbeys of the Rhineland, and the

two clerics may have exchanged ideas. Most medieval examples of water management

refer to the powering of mills, and more extensive systems of water delivery and

employment largely owe their existence to the slightly later foundations of the Cistercians

from the twelfth century onwards (see, for example, Arnold 2005). Charlemagne’s palace

at Ingelsheim in the Rhineland, however, had a piped water supply in the eighth century

(Grewe 2000), and Magnusson (2001, p. 5) refers to a late eighth century system at the

monastery of Fulda. Arnold (2007) has examined an eleventh century hagiographic work, a

life of St Hubert, founder of the Benedictine abbey at Andage in the Ardenne, in the

context of reference to the abbey’s manipulation of water supply and quotes:

ubi irriguosa foret limpha, quæ de fonte vocabulo Andaina fontana dirivatur … et

eam ubi per canales ad diversos monasterii usus influit, illuc postulando perduci

impetravit,

which is translated as

where the irrigation stream that had been diverted … from the spring called ‘Andaina

fontana’ flows through canals for various monastic purposes.

The implication is that a stream used for irrigation was also utilised to supply other

facilities at the monastery.

Whatever the origins, it is in an Icelandic context that the earliest definite evidence for

irrigation in the North Atlantic region appears. Gragas, the earliest Icelandic lawbook, was

compiled in the late thirteenth century but incorporates much that is earlier (Dennis et al.2000). The legal constraints upon irrigation are clearly stated and the fact that it refers to

the potential for injury to livestock implies something more than small ditches:

He has the right to make dams on such meadowland…and to dig his meadowland for

the purpose and so divert water onto the meadowland. He is to start the irrigation on

his meadowland and the water is to run off his meadowland into its old course. He

must not damage other men’s land by his irrigation. If other men’s animals suffer

damage in the water courses he digs, then he must pay for that. A man has no right to

make irrigation channels on his land in such a way as to spoil the land or mead-

owland of the man who lives lower down… (K § 188, transl. Dennis et al. 2000,

p.115).

The likely disputes are aptly described in one of the lesser known Icelandic sagas, that of

Havarður of Isafjorður:

It is said that Ljotur and Þorbjorn jointly owned an irrigated field (veitiengi). It was

very precious. The understanding was that they used it in alternate summers. There

was a stream below Ljotur’s farm that flooded the field in the spring. It was equipped

with dams that were well finished. It always happened that when Þorbjorn was due to

use the field he never managed to make use of the stream and in the end Ljotur said

that it did not belong to Þorbjorn and that he should not dare to claim the right to use

it. § 14, transl. Guðrun Sveinbjarnardottir.

In the context of Icelandic sagas, the inevitable outcome of this dispute is the murder of

Ljotur. Written down in the fourteenth century (Durrenburger and Durrenburger 1996,

E. Panagiotakopulu and P. C. Buckland

123

p. 15), the saga is set in the eleventh century when Christianity was being adopted in

Iceland, and perhaps incorporates an older oral tradition.

It seems similarly unlikely that irrigation in Iceland was an indigenous development,

but systems elsewhere in Europe are often difficult to date and whilst urban and monastic

domestic supply has been examined in some detail (most recently, see Magnusson 2001),

the literature on medieval irrigation systems north of the Alps is more scattered. It is

apparent, however, that there is no chronological overlap between the English system of

water meadow management (Bettey 1999) and the similar techniques used in medieval

Greenland. Berglund (1986), followed by Adderley and Simpson (2006) have argued that

the irrigation systems in Norse Greenland reflect an indigenous development. The latter,

utilising the climate records, also point to the frequent water deficits which this south-

western part of the country is prone to, and it is perhaps not a little ironic that the present

farmer finds a need to cut ditches to drain the hayfield, and incidentally are thereby

destroying the important palaeoecological record. The more controlled approach of the

Norse farmers suggests a more reasoned input in planning the system and the labour

required for the medieval Garðar system implies that it represents the imposition of a

management system on the landscape by an individual, or individuals, with previous

knowledge of irrigation techniques. Buckland et al. (2009) have suggested that the likely

context is the arrival of the first bishop, Arnald, in 1126. This would correlate with the

higher probability (71 %) for basal AMS date on the plaggen soil of AD 1120–1230

(=875 ± 35 uncalibrated bp SUERC-8575) (Buckland et al. 2009). Whilst the Saga of

Einar Sokkeson (Krogh 1967, pp. 167–182) need not be taken as a factual account of

events, the bare bones of the account are substantiated elsewhere, and Arnald was sent

out to the new See from Lund. He successfully weathered the internecine disputes of

Greenland for nearly thirty years before returning to Norway where in 1150 he became

bishop of another newly created See, that of Hamar (Halldorsson 1978, p. 66). Whilst the

appointment may have reflected his organisational skills, it may also relate to a return to

a sinecure near his point of origin, for Hamar lies less than thirty kilometres from

Gudbrandsdalen. As Arneborg (2005) has pointed out, in the early post-medieval period,

it is precisely this region, in the rain shadow of the high mountains of Sogn and

Fjordane, in which an irrigation system was practised. The system has been described by

Hatt (1916), more recently by Michelsen (Michelsen 1987, Michelsen 1998), and is well

summarised in a late eighteenth century drawing (Fig. 9). Arneborg, who also reproduces

this illustration (Arneborg 2005, Fig 13), suggests that the scoops were used to spread

water from the ditches onto the fields, but it seems equally probable that the circular

features in the subsidiary ditches are not pits to accumulate water but small heaps of

manure, which were spread out with the water onto the fields. As with the English

systems of water meadows, there remains the problem of dating. Even where there might

be artefactual evidence, post-medieval modification has overprinted any earlier use,

although Arneborg (op. cit.) draws attention to a late medieval irrigation tunnel in

Norway at the farm Ormelid, also in a rain shadow area, with rainfall of less than

500 mm per annum.

Whatever Arnald’s Icelandic connections, the management of irrigation waters is

mentioned in other West European sources. The description of Clairvaux in Aube, north-

east France, by William of St Thierry in 1143 contains clear reference to a system for

watering the abbey’s meadows and gardens. The full account provides an indication of the

scale of water management, beyond the well-known powering of mills and flushing of the

reredorter (the monastic latrine), practised by some monastic communities:

Irrigation at Garðar, SW Greenland, and its North European context

123

Where the orchard ends, the garden begins, marked out into rectangles, or, more

accurately, divided up by a network of streamlets; for, although the water appears

asleep, it is in fact slipping slowly away. ….This water, which serves the dual

purpose of feeding the fish and irrigating the vegetables, is supplied by the tireless

course of the river Aube, of famous name, which flows through the many workshops

of the abbey. …. By means of a winding channel cut through the middle of the

valley, not by nature but by the hard work of the brethren, the Aube sends half its

waters into the monastery. ….

Now that we have returned the stream to its bed, let us go back to those rills we left

behind. They too are diverted from the river and meander placidly through the

meadows, saturating the soil that it may germinate. And when, with the coming of

the mild spring weather, the pregnant earth gives birth, they keep it watered too lest

the springing grass should wither from lack of moisture….. This meadow is refreshed

by the floodwaters of the Aube, which runs though it, so that the grass, thanks to the

moisture at its roots, can stand the summer heat. Its extent is great enough to tire the

community for the space of twenty days when the sun has baked to hay its shorn

grassy fleece. Nor is the haymaking left to the monks alone: alongside them a

countless multitude of lay-brothers…. Transl. Matarasso (1993), p. 291.

Modification of such systems in the post-medieval period has made much of the

archaeological evidence ambivalent, but Glynn Coppack (1986, 1998, p. 101) has argued

that the diversion of the river Rye adjacent to the Cistercian abbey at Rievaulx in Yorkshire

enabled a system of water meadows from the mid-twelfth century onwards, and Steve

Moorhouse (1981, p. 696) has pointed to documentary evidence from the Augustinian

Priory at Bolton in the same county for diversion of the river Aire at Kildwick, presumably

for the same purpose. The English evidence for the medieval origins of water meadows has

been reviewed by both Brown (2005) and Cook et al. (2003), and it is apparent that the

Fig. 9 Manuring and irrigation in Gudbrandsdalen in the 17th Century, from Hatt (1916)

E. Panagiotakopulu and P. C. Buckland

123

prevailing paradigm of a post-medieval agricultural innovation is being replaced by one of

development from contoured systems of both monastic and secular origin. The problem

remains, however, as to how far back such water management north of the Alps can be

traced. Early medieval monarchs were not averse to organising their subjects for large

scale earth movement, and Squatriti (2002) makes the point that this may have been as

much assertion of centralised authority as practicality. Compared, for example, with

Charlemagne’s abortive attempt in 792-3 to connect the Rhine and Danube systems via a

canal (op. cit.), the contour irrigation of hayfields at Garðar is small scale, but in terms of

labour, it would represent the orchestration of a significant part of the otherwise dispersed

manpower of the Greenland farms and the assertion of someone’s, presumably a bishop’s,

authority.

Conclusion

The system of dams and contoured irrigation channels at Garðar and other sites in

Greenland cannot be seen as a spontaneous indigenous response to a seasonal water deficit,

but belongs to a tradition of similar responses widespread across the North Atlantic region,

from Iceland through Britain to Norway and southwards through France. Whilst several

examples are known in monastic contexts, secular systems are also recorded in docu-

mentary sources. It is probable, however, that the Greenland irrigation systems, with their

need for relatively large scale organisation of labour, for construction, maintenance and

annual harvest of hay crops relate to the increasing power of the Church, perhaps beginning

with the arrival of the first bishop, Arnald, from Norway. Insofar as it is possible to see

precipitate change in the palaeoecological record, the rapid transition from plaggen soil to

wetlands and peat growth suggests that this system fell apart abruptly, perhaps with the

departure of the last reeve in the Eastern Settlement and the final abandonment of Norse

Greenland.

Acknowledgments The Leverhulme Trust (UK) funded fieldwork in Greenland as part of projects fundedby grants to Professor K. J. Edwards, University of Aberdeen, Professor A. J. Dugmore and Eva Panag-iotakopulu, University of Edinburgh and Professor I. A. Simpson, University of Stirling. Fieldwork wascarried out in association with Kevin Edwards and Ed Schofield, and the text owes much to subsequentdiscussions, particularly with Jette Arneborg, Georg Nygaard and Guðmundur Olafsson of the respectiveNational Museums of Denmark, Greenland and Iceland. Guðrun Sveinbjarnardottir provided a new trans-lation of the relevant passage in Havarður’s Saga. Anastasios Panagiotakopoulos is thanked for drawing themap and site plan.

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Author Biographies

Eva Panagiotakopulu Eva Panagiotakopulu is lecturer in the Department of Geography at the University ofEdinburgh, Scotland. Having training initially as an archaeologist in Athens, she moved to Sheffield,England, for a master’s degree and subsequent doctorate, specialising in the identification and interpretationof fossil insect remains associated with man-made habitats, in particular those of stored products and relatedenvironments. As a Leverhulme Trust Research Fellow, she has expanded her primary work in the easternMediterranean, including examination of Classical sources, to Northern Europe and the North Atlanticislands. Current research stretches from Old Kingdom Egypt to post-medieval Labrador. She has recentlyadded research with fossil larval Diptera (true flies) to the range of techniques used in interpreting the past.

Paul C Buckland Paul Buckland graduated in geological sciences and archaeology from the University ofBirmingham, where he subsequently completed a doctorate in Quaternary entomology. He has taught in theuniversities of Birmingham, Sheffield, Bristol and Bournemouth, and is currently a self-employed technicianspecialising in work with fossil insects.

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