development of the settlement of Iceland after 870. No confirmed relics left by the papar
have been found in Iceland.
The first settlers of Iceland came from a variety of backgrounds. Different cultural
elements from Norway and Britain met and merged in Iceland to create a society with
no direct prototype in the old world. The majority of settlers could trace their roots to
Norway and many came directly from there, especially the south and western regions,
but it was also common among men and women of Scandinavian descent, who had been
brought up in the Viking colonies in Britain, to leave there for Iceland once news of the
settlement began to spread. With them were Gaelic people, from Ireland, Scotland and
the Scottish isles, as either independent settlers, or the wives of Scandinavian men, or as
slaves. Recent genetic studies suggest that among the first settlers in Iceland about 60 %
of the women were Gaelic and about 20 % of the males.
Many settlers from Britain and Ireland are said to have made their homes in the
Kjalarnes and Akranes districts of south-west Iceland. Some place names there are of
Gaelic origin, while several correspond to names found in a small area on the eastern
shore of the Isle of Lewis in the Hebrides. Thus place-name evidence supports the
written accounts of the settlers’ origins.
It is also noteworthy that many of the settlers coming from the British Isles seem to
have had an eye for salmon fishing as many of the best salmon rivers in the country are
associated with the settlement of either Gaelic people or Norsemen coming from that
part of the world. Stories about the Irish hermit Ásólfr alskik also confirm that Irishmen
were believed to be able to catch salmon in rivers, which were empty when Norsemen
arrived – showing a difference between the two peoples.
Many of the settlers were Christian, even though Scandinavian culture and heathen-
dom prevailed at first after the settlement. People of Scandinavian descent were in
charge of administration as well as farming and other work, and provided the crafts and
skills, household articles and domestic animals by which society was sustained. Slaves
were given Scandinavian names and had to learn the language of their masters, so their
culture was never dominant. Although it is impossible to assess the distribution of
different religions in the ninth and tenth centuries, archaeological finds tell us that the
Scandinavians in Shetland and Orkney had adopted Christianity long before the end of
the tenth century when, according to written sources, Óláfr Tryggvason is supposed to
have converted them. The people who left Breidafjord in Iceland with Eiríkr the Red in
985 or 986 and settled in Greenland have not left behind any signs of heathen burial
customs in Greenland. The oldest graves in the cemetery of Þjóðhild’s church are
Christian and date from the end of the tenth century. This shows that Christianity was
the living religion of these people, even though Óláfr Tryggvason is supposed to have
sent Leifr Eiríksson the Lucky to convert them in 1000. Many of the settlers around
Breiðafjörður originated from Britain and are likely to have brought the Christian faith
to Iceland when they arrived.
More than 300 Viking Age graves have been found in Iceland at a total of 150 sites,
none of them containing cremated remains. Few heathen graves have been discovered in
west Iceland, where Christian settlers are mentioned most frequently in early sources.
Considerable amounts of grave goods, weapons and even horses have been buried with
the dead.
Egils saga describes Skallagrímr’s burial mound as follows: ‘Egil had a mound made
on the edge of the promontory, where Skallagrim was laid to rest with his horse and
–– Gísli Sigurðsson––