A Hypothesis-Based Approach to Landscape Change in Suduroy, Faroe Islands

Citation

Edwards KJ, Borthwick D, Cook G, Dugmore AJ, Mairs K, Church MJ, Simpson I & Adderley WP (2005) A Hypothesis-Based Approach to Landscape Change in Suduroy, Faroe Islands. Human Ecology, 33 (5), pp. 621-650. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-005-4746-0

Abstract
Hovsdalur, an area delimited by the great cirques of upland central Suduroy, draining into the valley of the Hovs´a and terminating in the east at the coastal amphitheatre of Hovsfjørdur, is a microcosm of the Faroes. The area contains the physical and economic features which characterize the greater part of the island group—mountain, valley, and coast, and marine, cultivation, and grazing environments. Data comprising mainly geomorphological, palynological, and pedological evidence, covering the period prior to and subsequent to the initial Norse settlement (landnam), are used to test a series of hypotheses which exemplify the human ecology of the area. Not all the hypotheses, or aspects of them, proved acceptable—the Norse period clearly coincided with a number of vegetational and pedological changes, but this must be set partly against a backdrop of long-term geomorphological activity.

Keywords
Norse; Viking; Faroe Islands; North Atlantic; Settlement; Landnam; Archaeological geology; Land use Faroe Management; Landscape changes; Land settlement patterns, Faroe islands

Journal
Human Ecology: Volume 33, Issue 5

People

Professor Ian Simpson

Professor, Biological and Environmental Sciences