Explorations
Secrets of Ancient Iceland
The medieval turf farmhouse at Glaumbaer in northern Iceland, with the church peeking out from behind. In the hayfield below the medieval house, John Steinberg's crew is investigating a Viking Age longhouse that he discovered in 2002.Photo by Dean Goodman
Summer 2005
Settled by Viking chieftains around 900, Iceland remained free from outside rule for 300 years. Tradition holds that this independent society was egalitarian, an "almost democracy" that flourished until Iceland was swallowed by the kingdom of Norway in 1262. Penn State anthropologist Paul Durrenberger, however, has a very different view of Iceland's Golden Age.
This summer, a team headed by Durrenberger and UCLA archaeologist John Steinberg are putting Durrenberger's alternate theory to the test. Using a combination of cutting-edge remote sensing tools and traditional trowel-and-shovel archaeology, the researchers are mapping all the Viking Age farms in one valley of northern Iceland.
Writer Nancy Marie Brown is along for the ride. As a volunteer and observer at the dig site, she provides a ground-level (and underground) view of archaeologists at work and the thousand-year-old secrets they are laboring to reveal. Join her for dispatches from the field in Glaumbaer.
