1998 ), and seaweed must have provided a source of essential salts for balancing the
Norse diet. That other scourge of humans in Arctic systems, which largely close down
for up to six months of the year, scurvy, vitamin C deficiency (e.g. Troup 1987 ), could
be countered by the consumption of sheep and goat milk; the contrast with Inuit
diet, where all essential elements were provided by the consumption of raw meat
and fish, with a different consequent set of health risks (Hart Hansen et al. 1991 ), is
striking.
Throughout the North Atlantic region, the basic building material for both farm and
outbuilding was turf, sometimes on a stone foundation. Without grazing, however,
natural turf is poorly matted, and it is probable that the earliest phase of at least Faroese
and Icelandic landnám utilised other materials. In Iceland, pit-houses are often the
earliest structures on sites (Einarsson 1992 ; Simpson et al. 1999 ). The more typical
longhouse structure with outshots is illustrated by the farm at Stöng in Þjórsárdalur in
Iceland, abandoned after the eruption of Hekla in 1104 / 58. Since its excavation by
the Scandinavian Archaeological Expedition of 1939 (Stenberger 1943 ), it has become
perhaps the most widely reproduced plan in the history of Norse archaeology (e.g. Foote
and Wilson 1970 ; Fitzhugh and Ward 2000 ). Construction is of turf sods on dry-stone
footings with a central fire trench in the main hall, loom and small hearth in the end
room. At Stöng, the two outshots have traditionally been interpreted as a larder and
communal latrine (Ólafsson and Ágústsson 2003 ), although Buckland and Perry ( 1989 )
have argued that at least one of the barrels set in the floor may have been for the
collection and storage of human urine to provide an alkali for cleaning wool rather than
for food storage, and that the lined trenches either side of the other room reflect the
washing and dyeing of the finished cloth. There is relatively little animal bone from
the Þjórsárdalur sites, but the Stöng evidence, which also includes a small cow byre
with standing stall slabs, could be interpreted as the remains of a mixed livestock farm
with an emphasis on sheep. At Stóraborg on the south coast of Iceland, large numbers of
ectoparasites of sheep, both the ked, Melophagus ovinus, and the fleece louse, Damalinia
ovis, in a drain beneath a room in the farm reflect residues from the cleaning of wool
(Buckland and Perry 1989 ), and the presence of sheep, or fleeces, in several rooms on
many sites is evident in the widespread distribution of the remains of keds; at GUS in
Greenland these are supplemented by goat lice, both D. capreae and Linognathus stenopsis
(Panagiotakopulu et al. forthcoming).
In both Iceland and Greenland, fly faunas from within the farm buildings and in
deposits dumped out onto the middens are dominated by the puparia of Heleomyza
borealis and Telomarina flavipes, both breeding in protein-rich material in either faeces
or food debris within the rooms. The thermal requirements of the latter would
have restricted its life cycle entirely to within buildings (Panagiotakopulu 2004 ), and
Panagiotakopulu and others ( 2007 ) have suggested that its high frequency in the ter-
minal stage of the farm at Nipaitsoq in the Western Settlement of Greenland reflects a
community under stress. In general, however, the carefully constructed floors of farms on
the permafrost in Greenland provide suitable habitats for a wide range of introduced
species of insect, from flies to fleas (Buckland and Sadler 1989 ). Human lice are also
present in large numbers, probably both head and body lice (Sveinbjarnardóttir and
Buckland 1983 ), where preservation permits their identification. The large numbers of
the human flea, Pulex irritans, from sites in Greenland (Panagiotakopulu 2001 ) are not
matched elsewhere, although it should be stressed that living conditions do not seem to
–– Paul Buckland––