type with a main room furnished with a central long hearth and benches along the
long walls (e.g. Vebæk 1993 ; Albrethsen and Ólafsson 1998 ). Later the large multi-
functional room was divided up into smaller rooms with specific functions (Roussell
1941 ). At the high-status farms the houses remained dispersed whereas at the lower-
status farms, especially in the Western Settlement, living houses, stables, cowsheds,
barns and outhouses were moved so close together that from the outside they appeared
as one single building, and the inhabitants could move from the living quarters to the
other buildings without having to go outside. The two types of layout have been named
the longhouse (or the dispersed farm) and the centralised farm (Roussell 1941 ). The
development from the dispersed to the centralised farm has been regarded as a response
to climate change whereas the development of the living quarters reflects the changes in
social relations between humans that took place in the Middle Ages and which is not
specific to Greenland (Poulsen 2003 : 39 ).
Despite their dependence on marine resources, wealth in Greenland was based on
the ownership of land. The elite farmers lived on large coastal farms where the yields
were best. Even though they were not profitable, the elite farmers owned prestigious
cattle, unlike at the ordinary and smaller farms where sheep and goats dominated. As
additional signs of status the high-status farms had stone-built warehouses where
export commodities were kept until they were shipped to Norway, and they had large
celebration halls attached to the churches (Figures 43. 2 and 43. 3 ).
Figure 43. 3 The celebration hall at the Hvalsey fjord farm. (Photo: J. Arneborg 2004.
Copyright © National Museum of Denmark.)–– Jette Arneborg––